Winning the lottery

With the Powerball Lottery up over $340 million people start daydreaming about what they would do with that kind of money - me too. First you have to start off doing the math. The current cash value will be an estimated $164.4 million, which is fully taxable. For the sake of simplicity, I'll round down to $150 million. Let's say Uncle Sam gets 50% (which sucks, but anyway). So now I would have $75 million. Next take 10% to give back to God. I'd round up to $10 million - that leaves me with $65 million.

So what would I do first if I had the winning number? Get an unlisted phone number - everybody and their brother will be calling us wanting money. After that I would hirer and financial adviser and a tax consultant.

Now how would a donate the $10 million? $1 million St. Patrick's in Morristown, TN - they have a difficult mission surrounded by so many Protestant denominations. $1 million to EWTN's Online Services Department - there is so much more they could be doing if they had the technology. Encoding video for the web from VHS is so 90's. The other $7 million would most likely go to our parish - Our Lady of Sorrows in Homewood, AL.

That leaves us $65 million and there are family members that I'd most likely want to give something to: my dad, my sister, Jeff's dad, mom, sister and brother. The figure that comes to mind is $20,000 each. I'm sure wanting to give something to my daughters will be an extremely touchy subject since daughter #1 and daughter #2 have not contacted or spoken with me 1999. They will probably fall into the $20,000 each category. I'd also like to give something to Jeff's best friend Chris - not sure how much. I'd hate to stipulate that the money would be for them alone since they also donate 10% of their income.

Megan - I'd then like to set up a trust fund for her - I'd like her to go to college - I don't care how long it would take her - just that she goes and graduates. Naturally, I want to do more for her because she has been there and hasn't been afraid to go against her father or sister's feelings towards me. That has been very difficult for her and I'd also be making a point.

Doing things I've always wanted to do:


Buy an Airstream Skydeck - that sucker is $300,000. Then be able to travel the country - that's going to take some serious gas money isn't it? Build a house - location, that part is still up in the air - that's another $200,000 (or more).

Then to figure out what Jeff would like to do - he's been talking about a Goldwing - that would be a combination - tow one (or maybe two) behind the motorhome.

The rest had better be left to my financial adviser.