Oystein
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Messages
- 18,827
Before I finally start to "do my research" in Google, couple of anecdotes.
I personally know of two lottery winners among the people I personally know, and as chance would have it, they were employee and employer of one another, respectively.
The first to win a large-ish lottery price was the employee. I know this story only second hand, and it happened when I was a little kid, so I can't actually vouch for its truth value.
He and his wife played a lottery weekly together with friends, a lottery pool. I don't know, if we are talking two couples, or four or what... Anyway, they didn't even win the main prize, they only won the 2nd class prize, which would have been something like 50,000 Deutsche Mark, order of magnitude. Surely, that was nice money in the early 1970s, but nothing to live a high life on.
Regardless, the dude and his wife thought they were rich now - and he quit his job!
A year or two later, he came back, begging for his old job, because the money was gone. He got it back and kept it till retirement.
A decade or two later, his employer won the big price. Well, big-ish. Probably something like 3 million Deutsche Mark. Now that, in the 1980s, probably was money that could see a man and his family through, if invested wisely.
It was not invested wisely.
For starters, he built a house. It was far too big, too fancy, as he forgot that by the time the house was finished, the children would have moved out or be close to moving out.
But worse than that was probably that the windfall came just in time to prevent his business from going bankrupt. Being a nice, socially responsible boss, and perhaps not the greatest business man in the world, he didn't lay off anyone, kept making losses, and essentially gave lots of the money away to his employees.
And bought two or three cars too many.
And then he died.
His wife and children then discovered that he had stuffed a good part of what was left of the cash in nameless bank accounts in Luxemburg or Switzerland or whatever, had forgotten to tell the taxman about it... And so the money was off-limits to the heirs, unless they outed the tax fraud and payed several years of avoided taxes, plus interest.
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So. That's my personal database. Sample of 2, I know. Generally in line with the meme that not few lottery winners fly off into lala land.
I personally know of two lottery winners among the people I personally know, and as chance would have it, they were employee and employer of one another, respectively.
The first to win a large-ish lottery price was the employee. I know this story only second hand, and it happened when I was a little kid, so I can't actually vouch for its truth value.
He and his wife played a lottery weekly together with friends, a lottery pool. I don't know, if we are talking two couples, or four or what... Anyway, they didn't even win the main prize, they only won the 2nd class prize, which would have been something like 50,000 Deutsche Mark, order of magnitude. Surely, that was nice money in the early 1970s, but nothing to live a high life on.
Regardless, the dude and his wife thought they were rich now - and he quit his job!
A year or two later, he came back, begging for his old job, because the money was gone. He got it back and kept it till retirement.
A decade or two later, his employer won the big price. Well, big-ish. Probably something like 3 million Deutsche Mark. Now that, in the 1980s, probably was money that could see a man and his family through, if invested wisely.
It was not invested wisely.
For starters, he built a house. It was far too big, too fancy, as he forgot that by the time the house was finished, the children would have moved out or be close to moving out.
But worse than that was probably that the windfall came just in time to prevent his business from going bankrupt. Being a nice, socially responsible boss, and perhaps not the greatest business man in the world, he didn't lay off anyone, kept making losses, and essentially gave lots of the money away to his employees.
And bought two or three cars too many.
And then he died.
His wife and children then discovered that he had stuffed a good part of what was left of the cash in nameless bank accounts in Luxemburg or Switzerland or whatever, had forgotten to tell the taxman about it... And so the money was off-limits to the heirs, unless they outed the tax fraud and payed several years of avoided taxes, plus interest.
------------
So. That's my personal database. Sample of 2, I know. Generally in line with the meme that not few lottery winners fly off into lala land.