With all the lottery excitement from the Powerball jackpot reaching a whopping $500 million, it’s been a popular topic for a lot of people. Some are thinking about what they’d do with the money, but the odds are that you aren’t going to win.
However, it’s a lot more likely that someone you know will win. The odds aren’t great, but let’s say you have 500 friends on Facebook? Then the odds are about 500 times more in your favor that you’ll know someone who wins the lottery.
And if you do, do you think you’ll get a piece of that? If it’s merely an acquaintance, definitely not. If it’s a friend, you probably won’t see any cash, but you’ll benefit from some awesome parties and fringe benefits.
If it’s a family member? Jackpot, right? While you aren’t getting hundreds of millions of dollars, you can expect more than just some extra spending much.
But how much would you accept? Would you let someone buy you a house? Pay off all your debt? Put your kids through school?
I recently had this discussion with my brother-in-law, and he said that if I won the lottery, he’d be ok with accepting a down payment on a house, but not the whole thing. Even though I would accept the full price of a house, he said he wouldn’t want to take my manhood away, explaining that he still wants me to feel like I can support my family.
What I had to explain to him is that giving me a house shouldn’t make him feel like he’s taking anything away. Rather, he should only think of it as giving me something!
I definitely would be ok with letting someone pay off my debt. That just makes my life easier without making me feel entitled or not having to work anymore.
And I would absolutely be ok with someone putting my kids through school, education is one of the best gives you can give because it’s not something tangible and it provides the information necessary to be self-sustainable in the future.
Readers, are there limits to how much you would accept as a gift if someone you knew won the lottery?
Nope, no limits here. I love gifts – the bigger, the better if it’s easily affordable for the giver. I’d give back hugs, dancing around enthusiastically, and lots of dinner parties from my new house. :-)
I don’t think I would have any problem accepting a gift of any size unless I knew the person giving it couldn’t afford it or was being irresponsible.
I’ll take all the presents I can get!
PS. I hope your planning on winning the lottery, I could really use a new pair of Uggs, and a house wouldn’t be so bad either :-)
I don’t think there would be limits as much on what the gift is but rather who it’s from. I would probably accept a big gift (>$10k) from my parents or in-laws, but no one else.
I think as long as it is a one-time thing, I wouldn’t have any problems accepting a large gift. But, there creates some complications when you start to expect things going forward.
I agree that it depends on who is giving. I would worry that if someone gave me a lot of money in whatever form, it would come back to bite me in the butt so to speak. I hate to think ill of my friends but some people get really weird about money and lottery winners are known to go through it all pretty fast.