My wife would still have 2.5 million of it. She does all kinds of magic with money. When we were first married, I handled the money, because that is what men did. When she got ill with being broke all the time, she took over our finances and we have lived happily ever after.
I personally knew a fellow that did about the same thing, as the subject of the OP, only he died recently of natural causes. He won $500,000 in the lottery, then a couple of weeks later he hit it for another 35K, and this in the mid 1970s when 50K bought a nice house.
In less than a year, he was asking the boss for an advancement on his salary nearly every week. He had bought a new house on the financial strength of his winnings, along with two nice new cars, but financed them all. A year later he was driving a ragged out 10 year old vehicle, renting a dump, and bill collectors and the IRS were swarming around him. He was a good guy, but he had a sickness. The state took advantage of him.
My coworker won the money gambling and it only fed a gambling addiction, he simply played his winnings until they all disappeared, sure, that with enough purchases, he would hit the really big one.
I despise the lottery, it is a tax on the ignorant, the poor and the desperate who do not understand the odds of losing. I put the lottery right up there with "title loan" companies. I am not anti-gambling, but only on a game where I get to cut, deal and see who took all of the winnings. I would not buy a dollar lottery ticket if the potential pay-out was a billion; I just see it as an immoral system.
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