I wanna be a millionaire, so fricken bad.

I seldom play the lottery. I never did before, but my coworkers start collecting when it hits $150 million, and I decided to be a team player and contribute as well. Honestly, the thought of being the only one in the office on Monday is the only thing that costs me $6 a week when the Mega Millions reaches $150 mil. Well, that and the fun I have dreaming of that sort of money.

That is how I find myself with a part of 106 tickets in our work pool. That is how I find my husband as part of 15 tickets with his coworker. And that is why I stopped and bought my own ticket using the kids birth dates and the day John and I met. In all, we’ve put $13 into tonight’s Mega Millions, and while I have no grand illusions of winning, it is fun to think of what I would do with the money if we did.

First off, if you take the cash option, you’re looking at $462,000,000. Then take about 40% in taxes, leaving you with $277,200,000 for a single payout. If, for example, John won in his pool and got 1/3 of it, it would be a $92,400,000 payout, or if my office pool won and it would be divided among 32 people, it would be a payout of $8,662,500. You can see how the options change dramatically depending how many people the money would be divided by. A little over $8 mil sounds fine for a single person, unless you assume I’m going to live another 60 years. That works out to $144,000 (approx) per year if you don’t invest it anywhere.

Most people… or most people who have planned what they would do if they ever won, would likely invest it. For my purposes though, I’m going to assume that it is earning zero interest. Oh, and lets not forget inflation in my lifetime. With an $8 mil payout, I would probably still have to work at some point in my life in order to have enough to last until I died. Granted, if I invested it in a minimal CD earning 1% a year, I’d make $80,000 a year in interest alone and interest rates will probably climb in the future, when the economy turns around.

Alright, so now that we’ve talked numbers, what would I do with the money? If my office hit the lottery, I’d pay off our debt, put enough away for both of my kids for college, probably give my family and friends enough for a fresh start, and then invest the rest of it and continue working… at least for another five or ten years.

If John won, the options change dramatically. I would do all of the above, except for working. Instead, we’d donate to charity (yes, we’ve discussed this), maybe start our own nonprofit. We’d live off interest from our investments instead of continuing to work.

If we won on a single ticket… I can’t even fathom a single person winning that much money. I just can’t. I don’t think anybody NEEDS that much money. I told John that aside from all of the above, I’d probably walk down the street and randomly hand people money, or pick random addresses and mail them a cashiers check for x amount and spread the wealth.

Regardless, the first thing I would do is hire a lawyer to collect the winnings anonymously. I wouldn’t want a ton of people coming to me for money, I’d want to be able to make my decisions without that pressure. And I’ve heard stories of people intentionally getting hurt on a winners property just to sue them for their winnings. I guess after calling my lawyer, I’d call my insurance agent for a PUL policy. lol

Only an hour and a half more to dream.

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