Asklemmy

Keep it a secret.

Keep playing to get more rich.

Most professional gamblers quit just before a big victory. I won't make that mistake.

Not tell anyone and just quietly retire. Spend as much time as possible with my kids as they grow.

Talk to a major law firm about accepting the prize as anonymously as possible. Take the lump sum -payment to the lawyer team and divide it into thirds. One third goes into a trust that I can direct friends and family to with instructions to offer assistance for major life events, weddings, funerals, education and the like. That way I never have to be the bad guy who says yeah, no.

The second third will get invested into low risk bonds so I have a stable income forever

The final third will become what people normally do with lottery winnings, new home, that kind of stuff

Among other things, I’d keep going to work. I enjoy my job. What I’ll really enjoy is every time someone tries to pawn off something on me that’s not actually my job I’ll tell them, “not my job”

I would buy Reddit and convert it into a Lemmy instance.

Cut my hours back at work, maybe take a sabbatical spend much more time with my kids, and go to art school. I’m pretty good at it, but it wasn’t in the trailer park cards.

I'd keep it a secret except from the closest people to me. I'd be incredibly boring about what I'd do with it.

First I would pay off my mortgage and invest a chunk in "safe" investments - so shares in utility companies, funeral business - boring reliable investments - and property and land, across borders. All to try and guarentee I would stay financially secure long term for the rest of my life, and weather financial storms.

I'd help my immediate family financially (siblings and parents, and closest friends) but would not go over board - I'd make their lives better but not ruin them, and would aim to keep most of the money ready to keep helping for years to come rather than splurge out. And I wouldn't tell them how much I had so as not to ruin relationships.

For what I do for me I would think very hard. I'd probably not quit work immediately and I'd try not to ruin my life.

I'd probably look to travel but in bursts - either nice holidays and keep working (I like my job) or quit work and live 3 months at a time in places I've always wanted to be for a bit before settling down again.

Anything I do or buy I would do as someone "middle class". So I'd travel economy plus, I'd stay in decent hotal but not the most flashy, I'd buy a decent home but not a mansion (I don't need a 10 bed home, I'd just get a nicer version of what I have now - 3 beds but maybe detached and in a nicer area).

Basically I'd upgrade my life a little but I wouldn't go wild. I don't see the value in the conspicuously wealthy lifestyle - I'd see money as buying freedom but I wouldn't want to be wasteful, and I wouldn't want to be a target for criminals or leeches.

And the rest i'd start puting to good causes. That would probably be conservation charities, green charities, social projects I believe in. Id want to use it to create some kind of legacy even if anonymous - for me that would be something that meaningfully improved the world in some small but realistic way.

Basically I'd be very boring, stay anonymous and try and make relatively small but meaningful changes to my life and those I love.

If I won the lottery, I would start by ending the homeless problem in my state. All it would take would be one stroke of the pen and many people's lives would be improved.

I'd ditch it for a million dollars

But really, that'd easily put me in the top 0.1% of my country. I'd probably never manage to spend it all. I'd definitely set aside some millions for ReactOS and other open source projects that I like.

First start the process of getting a new wheelchair, my current one is 13 years old and leaves a trail of nuts and bolts.

Let's be a bit more realistic, I won 1 000 000 €. I would donate most of the stuff:

• Transfer 500k € to the National Bank of Ukraine;
• Transfer 70k € to nonprofits in my city;
• 30k € goes to spread the message of FOSS and Linux to Lithuania. That includes:
  • Establishing and maintaining a nation-wide open-source social network, primarily targeted for IT
  • Funding to FOSS projects in Lithuania (I don't know any ATM, though)
• 100k € goes to global IT non-profits, such as:
  • Wikipedia;
  • Lemmy and the Fediverse;
  • The Linux Foundation;
  • et cetera.

I am left with around 300k € that I'd use for myself.

Non-capital (leisure and hobby) (40k €):

• I'd like to have some free time/make my close friends happy, so ~10k € for that.
• Also, I'd like to travel to Japan, meet ZUN, have some alcohol-free beer with him. 10k € for that.
• 10k € for travelling (leisure) across Europe (incl. attending FOSDEM).
• Knowing myself, I'd really have some mad and stupid ideas appearing in my head, 10k € for that.

Capital/investing (260k €):

• I'd definitely have to buy an accomodation in Kaunas or Vilnius (I hope it's not Vilnius) if I'd like to continue my career in IT, so 100k € for that.
• Education (in a period of 3 years) (10k €):
  • LFCS/LFCE courses
  • Advanced mathematics and algorithms courses
  • Professional soft skills training
• 10k € is reserved for a black day, unused.
• 15k € of non-profit network infrastructure (hosting FOSS projects) (incl. maintenance for 4 years)
• 15k to have an individual for-profit business.
• Distributed investing (90k €, incl. investor costs)
• 20k is another buffer money for household expenses.

Disappear and never be heard from again.

I would be incredibly surprised, as I do not play the lottery. I'd probably start by getting a lawyer to handle it.

There is a comment on "that other site" that goes in detail about what to do. It starts with "You're fucked" and shows that you really have to be careful who to trust and what to do to not be bankrupt in a few years. I'm on mobile and short on time, but it's worth reposting here.

Pay off my mortgage, invest it and live off the interest, and spend the rest of my life traveling with my wife

I'd finally donate to Wikipedia. And NPR. So much so that both of them won't have to ever ask me for money ever again.

Fuck off

Make a way bigger bucket list and actually start competing it.

Give my uncles, aunts and cousins a cool mil each, give my mom and my sister 10 mil each, buy some real estate on the coasts, and most likely fund some Democrats in Florida and Texas, do some traveling

Run off and never be seen again. Maybe live in a bunker idk

Hide it.

Tear the ticket up and throw it away.

My life is bad enough, without the lottery ruining it further with constant harassment, death threats, attempted muggings, entitled family demanding handouts, new "relatives" magically materializing from the ether, etc etc.

If I want to fuck my life up that badly, I'll start doing heroine and meth. I'd probably have better 10 year survival prospects, as well.

Start my own research company.

Piss off the mortgage first, then sit for a bit and think about the rest.

Go to a casino and walk up to a roulette table and put it all on black.

I'd get a house for me and my family. Make sure my parents have a house that meets their needs as well. I'd hire a personal trainer to get in shape and take a few months off work while I figure out what to do next.

Pay off the mortgage and quietly live out the rest of my life, probably on the interest alone.

Not tell anyone if possible. Big winnings are the way to ruin in most cases.

Buy a bottle of McCallans 12yr and a 8ball and see where I wake up next week.

I'd buy as many billboards as possible and use them to troll whomever I feel like.

I've got a couple of people in my life I would set up, take care of my family's long term debts, set aside enough to retire tomorrow, and find a charity I really liked to donate the rest... the fuck I need that much money for?

Realistically, and assuming I claimed it and handled the financial and legal aspects of having that much money, I’d do this;

Pay off my debts, as well as those of my parents and sister, then help friends pay off everything. Then buy a nice house and nice stuff, leave my job, then travel.

Then I’d see what sorts of things I can use my money to improve, or who I can help.

While money is nice for security, I don’t need or want anywhere remotely close to 1$billion at one time. That amount of money is dangerous.

Skipping past the obvious of paying off debts and buying a decent house, I'd do this:

Found a company to sell tech products (Pinephone, but cooler). Only the best benefits, work environment, basically everything I hate about any job I've worked, fixed. I'd hire good people, and make damn sure they're treated well. After everything is going well and with some kind of charter so they can't decide to be evil, I'd turn the company over to my employees. I'd step down and become a janitor or something and work ~20 hours a week until I retire.

Whatever money's left over, if there is any, is given away.

I want to work. I like working. I just want to work somewhere good, ya know?

I'd just buy my employer but they made ~450m Euro after taxes so they might want more than a billion. Also fuck audits.

I'd immediately try to give away most of it to a good cause I carefully researched or pull up my own organization that tries to tackle problems that could be improved with that kind of money.
You can't be a billionaire and a good person as you decide to not share an outrageous amount of wealth you couldn't spend in multiple lifetimes without diving into more and more absurd forms of consumerism.

Make sure my mom's in home health care is paid for for the rest of her life, so that she can continue to live in her house as she wishes while she is still with us, retire from my paid career early, do volunteer work instead, and travel often.