No one tell my wife this, but...
No one tell my wife (since she hates it when I buy these) but I have in my wallet a lottery ticket that has 10 sets of numbers ($10) and if I win (which is very unlikely) the pay off here in CA will be a bit more then $60 million. Now of course because of our age if I won we would take the one time pay out and then there is taxes to be taken care of, so in the end it would only be about $20-$24 million. Now of course that is much more then we would be able to spend in our lifetime (unless we went completely nuts, which we will a little (I AM getting a 1973 Lotus Europa!)), so what would/should we do with the rest?
We each have children from previous marriages, but are not terribly inclined to give them each more then a small amount for various reasons. My wife lost two sons in her life, one to Hypo-plastic Left Heart Syndrome when he was only a few days old and one to AIDS and we'll probably donate a chunk to each medical problems. We also love our dogs, so I am sure the ASPCA and our local no-kill shelter will be getting some too. Still we would want to spread more of it around or should we?
The question is, after the obvious taking care of bills and a few toys, what would you do with the rest? Give it all to your children/grand-children? Start a Scholarship and for what? Give most of it to a few (or one) charities or give small amounts to many? Not leave a Will and hope there is an afterlife so you could watch the fun of the fights over it?
This is all built on a fantasy of course, but still, would you give some/all of it away to someone(s) or charities? Do your best to spend it all before you die?
Of course given that we probably won't win the lotto, all of our assets are going to the above mentioned charities anyway, but still...
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Of course infants born with Hypo-Plastic Left Heart have a much better chance at survival today, because surgery is available that wasn't then, so that part would probably go to The Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. Giving to the other ones is what I think we would do and give just a relatively small amount to each of our children (maybe $50k-$100k).
What would you do?
I would give a small amount to my kids, grandkids and great grandkids...The rest would go to charities.
ASPCA with the stipulation that a specific amount went to our local branch each year.
A foundation for education for the kids of the Red Lake Reservation MN.
A couple of medical research and charities that deal/reseach disease that our family has had to deal with.
Ah! You just reminded me! I have to change our will to add a share for Saint Josephs Indian School!
Good choice
I try to send them some money every year, even when money is tight. They do very good work and need it, IMHO.
They do great work...
What I like is that, unlike many Catholic based schools that invaded Reservations a hundred or more years ago, they do not try to teach the children to be White or to "integrate" with White society. They teach them to honor their traditions and heritage and to be proud of them. That is rare.
I've often wondered this very question. Obviously it depends on the size of the award and such. The other problem is dealing with the legalities of giving a lot of it away. What I want to do with it might cause problems I didn't anticipate. I would certainly have to hire a lawyer to figure it out. For instance, the gift tax is rather substantial. Right now if you were gift over a $ 1 million that was subject to the gift tax, the person you gave it to would only keep 60% of the gift. Uncle same would get the rest.
How that all works between family members, friends and charities is something I don't understand so I would have to have a lot of help with it.
As far as what I would do? I would move. I think living in my same house would become untenable. I would probably move upwardly slightly in home and hire a butler. I can't cook for crap. I also have difficulty cleaning the house as it is. I can keep the floors clean and such but anything high is about impossible. So I may as well hire someone to do that for me. I could certainly afford it at that point. I would probably buy a nice rugged SUV and a few things I would like to have. I doubt I would change enough that anyone walking by me would think I was rich at that point. They would probably just see some old fart in typical baggy clothes and a cane walking around.