Facts About the Lottery
Many lottery winners claim that winning the lottery was not all that it is made out to be and that winning the lottery is the worst thing that ever happened to them. In fact many of these winners claim to have lost their friends and family due to their large winnings and the circumstances that surrounded their new status in life.
Lottery winners eventually have financial difficulties due to the lack of budgeting and making a solid financial plan with their new winnings.
Americans spend more than $25.1 billion a year on lottery tickets.
A $1 million dollar jackpot is not a $1 million prize by any means. Technically you are only a thousandaire, not a millionaire, thanks to the IRS withholding their 28% each year from your lottery check.
If you purchase a lottery ticket with a group of people, a winning lottery ticket can become your worst nightmare if you solely claim all of the money as the lottery reports only your SSN to the IRS. This makes you liable to pay all of the federal income taxes due on the winnings. If you distribute the winnings among group members, you are additionally liable for gift taxes on amounts more than $10,000 given to each group member annually. To avoid this problem you can draft a simple group partnership agreement using a do-it-yourself legal kit available at office supply stores. You should also request a free SS-4 form from the government that includes a Federal Employee Identification Number for joint winning lottery claims. Call the IRS at 800-829-3676 for the form.
More than $61 million dollars have gone unclaimed as most states require that winning tickets be filed within six months of the winning date, and tickets get thrown away, washed, stolen or misplaced.
Privacy becomes a thing of the past once you become a multimillionaire as you are now considered a celebrity. Getting an unlisted phone number, post office box and a sound security system installed into your new home is important to your sanity.
Psychologist Steve Danish, a professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, has studied the impact instant wealth has on lottery winners.
"The dream you have about winning may be better than the actuality of winning," he said. "There have been families that have just -- just been torn apart by this process."
Kenneth and Connie Parker were winners of a $25 million jackpot. Their 16-year marriage disintegrated just months after they became rich beyond their wildest dreams.
Jeffrey Dampier, a $20 million winner, was kidnapped and murdered by his own sister-in-law.
In 2002, Jack Whittaker won the largest individual payout in U.S. lottery history.
"I can take the money," Whittaker said at the time. "I can take this much money and do a lot of good with this much money right now."
But it didn't work out like that. Whittaker's life was consumed by hardship, including the death of his beloved granddaughter Brandi, who was a victim of a drug overdose, and the breakup of his marriage.
"If I knew what was going to transpire, honestly, I would have torn the ticket up," said Jewell Whittaker, Jack Whittaker's ex-wife.
For Eddie Nabors, the 52-year-old truck driver from Georgia turned recent mega millionaire, Danish offers this advice.
"I think you can probably fish for a couple days … but I'm not sure you can fish for 10 or 20 or 30 years," Danish said. "Without that goal or plan about what you expect to happen for yourself … it could be your worst nightmare."
Lottery winner Bud Post of Pennsylvania was nearly murdered for his money when his brother reportedly hired a hit-man to kill him in an attempt to get his cash.
Victoria Zell won the lottery in Minnesota but soon landed in jail after being found guilty on multiple counts of vehicular homicide.
And Texan lottery winner Billie Bob Harrell sadly ended his own life after out-of-control spending sprees and an affair left him deeply in debt and divorced.
* Daryl LePage, certified financial planner, on challenges that lottery winners face â€" “When you win a large sum of money, you would think that your problems go away. In reality, a new set of problems come in.
* Michael Carroll on losing his family after winning the lottery â€" “In some ways I think to myself if I had never won, I might still have my wife and daughter.†Evelyn Adams, who won the $5.4 million dollar New Jersey lottery not just once, but twice in 1985 and again in 1986 gambled most of it away, and is broke today.
1993 Missouri lottery winner Janite Lee won $18 million, but was overly generous by giving the money away to a variety of causes leading to her filing bankruptcy just eight years after her stroke of good fortune hit.
Billie Bob Harrell Jr. hit the $37 million dollar Texas jackpot in 1997 only to end his own life less than two years later when he realized that all he wanted his marriage more then the money, but that it was too late to fix the strained marriage. Why was it strained? His spending habits spiraled out of control, and his wife only wanted a normal life which was anything but.
Scholars disagree on who started the ancient tradition of lotteries, but there are references in the Bible. In Chapter 26 in the Book of Numbers, Moses used a lottery to award land west of the River Jordan. For more information about lottery history, go to:
-http://www.naspl.org/05/history.html
-http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2941589
-http://faithcenter.wordpress.com/2008/02/16/the-lottery-curse-by-elaine-davenport-tuesday-february-26-2008/
-http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/70165/winning_the_lottery_curse_or_a_blessing_pg3.html?cat=47
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