Do you feel....lucky???

[unclevlad]

It's twofers week.

 

Tuesday is a MegaMillions drawing with the estimated jackpot of ~ $850M (about $630M cash payout).

Then Wednesday is Powerball.  Estimated $730M / $540M+ cash.

 

That is what I would definitely call stimulus money.

[csyphrett]

I would love to win either, but I have never been that lucky. It would be nice to have all my bills paid with a nest egg to draw on for emergencies.

 

I already told my boss I would be the worst employee ever.

 

"THank you for calling. We ran out of food. Call tomorrow."

CES

[Old Man]

We can't buy Powerball or Megamillions tickets here, but good luck to the rest of you.

[Pariah]

Well, do you, punk?

[Lord Liaden]

I would honestly hate to win that much money. It would cause more headaches than it would solve. I don't want to buy anything requiring that order of magnitude of lucre. My name and face would be made public, and everyone wanting a handout would start hounding me. Deciding how to use the money to benefit which people would be a huge responsibility. And I'd never be sure if people genuinely wanted to be my friends, or just use me.

 

My dream is a one to five million dollar prize. I'd spread the majority to my family and a few causes I consider worth supporting, then retire on the rest.

[Pattern Ghost]

If I had the same luck with the lottery as getting weird ass medical conditions, I'd already be a millionaire.

[Pariah]

You can't buy tickets for either of those here, and I don't really feel like driving to Idaho or Nevada. Ever, really.

[unclevlad]

Whether you have the right to anonymity or not varies from state to state, actually.

 

That said, if I couldn't (and in New Mexico, your name, city of residence, and prize amount would be available, but NOT your picture)...I'd work around it as much as I could.  Build some basic corporate structure that has no real meaning *other than* to provide a separate name on the paperwork.  Then probably move to a different city;  one thing we don't have is very good medical care, so that would be a consideration.  I'd probably stay in the West;  the trick would be figuring out where.  

[Pariah]

Calgary, maybe?

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Pattern Ghost said:

If I had the same luck with the lottery as getting weird ass medical conditions, I'd already be a millionaire.

 

Perhaps this would not be a problem if you did not have a weird ass?

[wcw43921]

It's been quite a while since the jackpots have gotten that high, on account of ticket sales and subsequent rollovers being depressed by COVID-19.  And once again, I find myself identifying with Charlie Bucket in this exchange for Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory--

 

MRS. BUCKET: I wonder who the lucky ones will be.

CHARLIE: Well in case you're wondering if it'll be me, it
won't be.  Just in case you're wondering, you can count me
out.

MRS. BUCKET: Charlie . . . there are a hundred billion
people in this world, and only five of them will find Golden
Tickets.  Even if you had a sackful of money you probably
wouldn't find one.  And after this contest is over, you'll
be no different from the billions of others who didn't find
one.

CHARLIE: But I am different.  I want it more than any of
them.

MRS. BUCKET: Charlie, you'll get your chance.  One day
things will change.

CHARLIE: When?  When will they change?

MRS. BUCKET: Probably when you least expect it.  See you
later.

I admit--I want both jackpots.  Not enough to blow my entire paycheck on tickets, but I want them.  And while there are those who say having all that money isn't all it's cracked up to be--there's this dialogue from the movie to consider--
 

WILLY WONKA: But Charlie, don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted.

CHARLIE BUCKET: What happened?

WILLY WONKA: He lived happily ever after.

 

Good Luck to all who play--and Good Luck to those who don't as well.

[IndianaJoe3]

10 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I would honestly hate to win that much money. It would cause more headaches than it would solve. I don't want to buy anything requiring that order of magnitude of lucre. My name and face would be made public, and everyone wanting a handout would start hounding me. Deciding how to use the money to benefit which people would be a huge responsibility. And I'd never be sure if people genuinely wanted to be my friends, or just use me.

 

With that much money, I would have different, probably less severe, headaches. There are steps I can take to protect my identity (at least in my state). And I'd be able to afford to pay someone to tell people who wanted my money to go away.

 

I wonder if one could reduce global poverty significantly with that kind of money?

[Lord Liaden]

8 hours ago, wcw43921 said:

WILLY WONKA: But Charlie, don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted.

CHARLIE BUCKET: What happened?

WILLY WONKA: He lived happily ever after.

 

 

For me the key is, "everything he always wanted." I never wanted anywhere near that much. And a lot of it I can't buy.

 

1 hour ago, IndianaJoe3 said:

 

I wonder if one could reduce global poverty significantly with that kind of money?

 

No. Even hundreds of millions is a drop in the bucket compared to the world's need. And you'd inevitably run into the bureaucratic incompetence and corruption that already keeps billions from getting to the people who need it and are entitled to it. But you could make a significant difference to many people, and helping anyone in need is worth doing.

[Ternaugh]

13 hours ago, Pariah said:

You can't buy tickets for either of those here, and I don't really feel like driving to Idaho or Nevada. Ever, really.

 

Nevada doesn't have a lottery. We have Megabucks, a bunch of networked slot machines that have a top prize of at least $10 Million. I believe that it was hit about 2 weeks ago, at somewhere over $15 Million.

[DShomshak]

I am already lucky in that I have enough food, a roof over my head, and do not live in immediate fear of bandits killing me for my shoes or for being in the wrong tribe.

 

Winning a jackpot would be nice, though. It would relieve certain fears for my future. I could repair the house, and maybe add a second floor to hold all the books, records, CDs and movies my hoarder brother has collected. I could maybe buy HERO Games and make more material available. Support some social/political causes that I think could make the world a better place, even if my support would still be small compared to global needs.

 

I don't know if these tickets are even available in my state, though, and I am for all practical purposes housebound, so my chances are nil.

 

Dean Shomshak

[archer]

1 hour ago, DShomshak said:

 I could maybe buy HERO Games and make more material available. 

 

Dean Shomshak

 

Quick, someone buy Dean a ticket and send it to him.

 

Or if you can't get his address, I'll give you mine and I'll buy HERO then hire Dean full-time if I win.

[archer]

8 hours ago, IndianaJoe3 said:

 

I wonder if one could reduce global poverty significantly with that kind of money?

 

Running the numbers.

 

If you win the $630 million cash payout, immediately around half of it would go to federal and state taxes.

Remainder $315 million.

 

That's almost nothing compared to the size of the world's problems, if you spend all that money at once.

 

However, let's say you invest your money somewhat safely and conservatively so that you won't lose it but make a decent yearly profit with it (as if you're a frumpy old person invested in frumpy old people mutual funds). The rule of thumb is that investing like that, you'd average a 10% yearly return on your investment (which is about what my 401k has made yearly over the last 16 years).

 

That'd give you $31.5 million per year to put toward charitable causes. Looking at it that way, it's a hell of a lot of money (and your living expenses would barely be a rounding error out of that amount of money).

 

There's micro-loan programs where through existing charities you loan someone $100-$1000 in some impoverished country so someone there who has made an application for a loan can start their own business. If successful the person lifts themselves out of poverty and often hires people to work for them. Over a number of years if the business is successful, the initial loan is repaid.

 

So with your yearly money, you'd be helping at least 31,500 people per year start their own business if you loaned them each $1000 (obviously helping more people if the loan size per person is smaller).

 

What's nice about doing your charity this way is that a number of those loans will be repaid over time. So you can loan out that money again to someone else in addition to what you're budgeted to be loaning out that year.

 

Over 20-30 years, with the snowballing effect of people repaying their loans, you'd have helped out a hell of a lot of people.

 

(Since all your "profits" are being plowed back into a charity program that's going to be "losing money" overall, you can structure things so you don't have to worry about paying taxes.)

 

====

But let's say you wanted to be more aggressive with your investments and instead of investing like a frumpy old person, you invest like a person who has 30 years until retirement and has plenty of time to recover from any losses.

 

You can invest in mutual funds like that and average 15-17% per year increase (rather than 10%).

 

If you're averaging 15% rather than 10%, the money you can put yearly toward charitable purposes is 50% larger.

 

 

You couldn't solve world poverty as a whole. But you could make a huge impact on a lot of people's lives for a very long time. And have the number of people you impact grow rapidly year over year.

[DShomshak]

Oh, hey, I thought of some more "gamerish" things to do with a few hundred million $$ that might still be considered somewhat socially laudable.

 

First: Privately funded space probe. NASA can send small Mars missions for about $250 million, which IIRC is about the budget of Titanic. So maybe you could give NASA, the ESA or some other space agency the funding to send a small probe to Mars or (better, IMO) to some place with a lower priority such as a return visit to Ceres or one of the outer planets. (Uranus and Neptune have only been visited once, so briefly that more questions were raised than answered. Even a modest probe could be useful.)

 

Second: Doomsday archives. As a hedge against the possible end of civilization (whether from nuclear war, climate disaster, a much worse pandemic, religious crazies or just cascade failure from an increasingly fragile and ill-understood technosphere). Could be stashes of books printed on payrus (it provably lasts millennia in dry conditions), engraved aluminum plates, or wall carvings in caves. Hide some vaults of useful basic tools, too. For instance, a set of tablets that tell how to grind lenses, the principles of geometrical optics, and how to make a simple telescope and microscope; or basic germ theory and vaccination.

 

As a hedge against crazies who want to destroy knowledge as a way to make the worlkd righteous, each trove includes clues to the location of a weapon of such power that whoever owns it can rule the world. The clues are nonsense and there is no weapon, but it will keep people looking for more archives and preserving what they have. (And there's your post-holocaust game premise. You're welcome.)

 

Third: Perhaps a bit more selfish: Fund a Champions Universe movie or TV show. Let the rest of humanity know about this wonderful thing that gives us such joy.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

22 hours ago, archer said:

 

Quick, someone buy Dean a ticket and send it to him.

 

Or if you can't get his address, I'll give you mine and I'll buy HERO then hire Dean full-time if I win.

 

Definitely one of the things on my lottery list.

[unclevlad]

Actually, what I'd try to do would be to get everyone here to a project, which I'd fund, to produce a completely reorganized, linked PDF or HTML format, so it's not tied to the print medium's limitations.  It'd be all of volume 1 and at least the first 5 chapters  (the combat stuff) from volume 2.

[Pariah]

3 hours ago, DShomshak said:

Third: Perhaps a bit more selfish: Fund a Champions Universe movie or TV show. Let the rest of humanity know about this wonderful thing that gives us such joy.

 

I'm totally on board with this, especially if we can use the team from 4th Edition. I've already got an idea for the movie poster....

[wcw43921]

I'd love a 4th Edition Universe movie myself, especially if there were a place for Crusader and Starburst.  Perhaps they could get a streaming series out of it. 

[Pariah]

I could totally see "Crusader and Starburst" as a buddy cop movie.

 

Let's get this done, people!

[wcw43921]

That's me as well.  I'll browse the crowdfunding sites and come upon a really neat project, and I say to myself, "If I had the money I would fund that thing a dozen times over.  And show up for the premiere."

 

That's at least one thing I'd do with All That Money--become a crowdfunding mogul.  Especially when it comes to gaming minis and action figures.

[unclevlad]

Well...no luck for me.  Or mostly.  I did win back $2 out of the $10....

 

BUT no one won tonight (Mega Millions) so the feeding frenzy REALLY begins to go wild.  Estimated jackpot for Friday is a bit under $1B.  As in Billion.  As in dollar amounts you only hear about in Federal budgets.  Cash value a bit over $700M.  

BTW, the highest Federal tax rate is 37% this year.  Max state tax is 5%, but that of course varies wildly, and some cities have an income tax too.  But it kinda matters...8% more in my grubby greedy hands means $56M here.  Heck, figure that's more than I will ever, EVER need so I could keep that for myself and try to do Good Things with all the rest.

I said I *could* people........stop sniggering behind my back......