About that unclaimed lottery jackpot...It has been claimed

[DontBooVote]

Last edited Tue Mar 5, 2019, 11:57 AM - Edit history (1)

The winner, a South Carolina resident, has chosen to remain anonymous and elected to collect the winnings in a one-time payment of $877,784,124 — the largest jackpot payout to a single winner in U.S. history, the lottery said in a news release.

Read more here: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/south-carolina/article227101379.html#storylink=cpy

[shanny]

1. Prob spent all this time

Setting up a system to preserve anonymity and a new life.

[Luciferous]

5. That's what I would do!

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

30. This. If I won, I'd have to go into Witness Protection ...

... to stave off the visits from relatives.

[Codeine]

2. Hopefully the DU conspiracy theorists

will see this news and realize how silly they sounded.

[former9thward]

3. They will quickly move on to another one.

[Awsi Dooger]

6. Such a shocker that normalcy prevails

So often in Las Vegas all I had to do was allow all the adjusters to screw up a betting line by overreacting to their biases. Sit back until the price cooperates and then wager on wonderful normalcy.

Same here. Can you imagine what the price would have been, if the posters in that thread had been able to assign the odds?

Scary

[fascisthunter]

11. Never heard of this before

nor seen it on DU.

[Blue_true]

13. Some people were insisting that the States were colluding to keep the jackpot. nt

[cbdo2007]

24. Oh you're no fun...half of conspiracy theories end up being true

so sometimes we are wrong and other times the official story is wrong. It's all part of the fun with online message boards and the news in general, lol.

[ret5hd]

4. Aunt Janice...you know I've always liked you the best, right?

[Takket]

7. why in the world for a jackpot that size would you take the lump sum?

and not the annuity?

a lot of lottery winners lose it all.... the annuity basically guarantees no matter what stupid ass move you make to blow your money, you still get a fat check every year.

i can see it for a smaller jackpot but this one... every year you are going to get more money than you could spend in a year anyway!

unless the winner is quite old and wants to give the money out to their family.

[trueblue2007]

9. i would take the yearly payout also. it would be soooooooooo much money !!!

[Progressive Jones]

10. Here's exactly why I wouldn't take the annuity.

I have no faith that I'd collect for 25 years, or whatever the payout period is.
I have no faith that the rug won't be pulled out from under me by some political malfeasance.
That winner just collected on the greatest investment ever made. Turned $2.00 into over 3/4 of a billion dollars.

[Blue_true]

14. When the jackpot is won, the states making up the pool buy an annuity.

It is the same concept as a Trust. Some Family Trusts are hundreds of years old. There are insurance companies like Lords of London that have specialized in that field for many decades.

[George II]

15. The winner could be a senior citizen and wanted to enjoy his/her winnings.

[Totally Tunsie]

16. This article goes on to answer that exact question:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/mega-millions-winner-of-dollar15b-jackpot-comes-forward-why-they-chose-the-lump-sum/ar-BBUnm9F?li=BBnb7Kz

[JoeOtterbein]

19. You can always buy as many annuities as you want with the cash. n/t

[MineralMan]

26. I would opt for the lump sum. I am 73 years old.

My plan for such a lottery win would be to carefully give it all away before I died, while enjoying my aging as I pleased. I have no children to pass it along to.

If I won such a sum, I'd make it my life's work to distribute it in a way that produced the maximum good effects. My wife agrees with that, too. We'd make sure we would do OK, financially, but the goal would be to spread that money around in useful ways.

[madinmaryland]

8. LOL! They are closer to being a billionaire than tRump will ever be!

Trump has hemorrhaged billions for years. The epic failure.

[Traildogbob]

17. 1%

At least they will be in the winning tax bracket Ryan is so proud of. Just hope they are not or become GOP just to protect that status.

[defacto7]

20. The person is from SC. What's the probability that they are a liberal?

Not much.

[Are_grits_groceries]

23. You calling me names? nt

[defacto7]

32. oops, sorry...

[Are_grits_groceries]

33. Not mad!

Just yanking your chain.
SC is a weird state.

[Vinca]

12. Imagine the good you could do with loot like that . . .

[3Hotdogs]

18. Isn't it Illinois or Indiana which has defaulted or delayed paying out some of its winnings?

[tclambert]

21. Can I get that payout in quarters, please?

3,511,136,496 of them, please. That's 43,889,206.2 pounds.

[Codeine]

22. Carryout at Window 3! nt

[Ms. Toad]

25. Pretty sure it's closer to half a billion after taxes.

The $877,784,124 is the lump sum payment (rather than the $1.5 billion paid out over time). Received in one lump sum, 37% federal income tax will be due on the bulk of the money, knocking it back to closer to half a billion.

[DontBooVote]

27. I'm pretty sure the jackpot was closer to $1.5B, as the headline at the link states.

Also says it was $1.5B in the body of the article...at the link.

[Ms. Toad]

28. You're confusing the reduction for taking it in a lump sum

with the taxes owed on the winnings (regardless of whether you get the lump sum or the installent payments).

Imagine you’re in the enviable position of deciding how to take home $1.537 billion.

That’s the decision for one lucky person in South Carolina who holds the winning Mega Millions ticket for the second-largest jackpot ever.

The winner has two options: Take a lump sum payment of $878 million or get paid the entire jackpot over 30 annual payments.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/10/24/mega-millions-should-winner-take-lump-sum-annual-payments/1749411002/

The lump sum payout is the present day value of 1.5 billion - the amount that - if invested - would grow into 1.5 billion over the 30 years. It's sort of like a mortgage You can pay the sticker price for your new home all at once (a smaller amount) or you can make mortgage payments over 30 years (which will be a much larger amount because the payments include interest on the amount for up to 30 years).

Whatever you get in a single year is taxed - for an amount this large - mostly at 37%. Since he's taking the smaller one-time payout - all of it will be taxed this year - so he only gets (roughly) 63% of 800+ Million - or roughly 500 Million.

[DontBooVote]

29. Thank you for the clarification. I have edited my headline to remove the "after taxes" bit.

Thank you, Ms. Toad.

[Ms. Toad]

31. I like numbers. :)