Lottery Winner Jack Whittaker's Losing Ticket | Hacker News Reader

Lottery Winner Jack Whittaker's Losing Ticket

businessweek.com

47 pointskitcar16 comments

There's a longer story with a lot more about the lottery win and fall of his family and community that goes more in-depth, from 2005.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36338-2005Jan25?la...

The best advice I ever read if you win the lottery: get an attorney to claim the money on your behalf and don't tell anyone. I had family friends destroy their lives after winning a substantial amount and it's not pretty to watch.

I'm not sure why this article keeps getting upvotes. This is an article about a person who won their state lottery 10 years ago, then lost all the money through constant, consistent poor decision-making. The winner was a small business owner, that's the only connection I can make.

I've heard this story dozens of times, usually from morally-aggressive people as an anecdote for why money is evil. I've heard it discussed on radio talk shows, and also by radio DJs. I could swear I've read about it here before, and I'm sure I've seen it on TV too.

I think the interesting point is that he already had a lot of money, and was perfectly capable of handling it. But when the money was handed to him (rather than earned) he went off the rails.

I'm not qualified to say whether that is a known psychological reaction, but it would seem relevant to the startup world.

My guess: unearned money gives one a sense of social status, and high social status (like power) corrupts. Most of the destructive things these people do are related to social status.

It doesn't sound to me like he necessarily has a money-management problem. He probably still is quite rich. It's the rest of his life that is ruined.

It hit home for me because it brought to light something I hadn't thought about before.

I, like a lot people, have had daydreams about winning the lottery and what I would do with the money. I'd consider myself relatively fiscally intelligent, I'd make a few gratuitous purchases but most of the money would get invested. However, my daydreams also include giving a lot of money to the people I love. Seems like a harmless, selfless gesture, but Jack Whittaker's generosity towards his granddaughter contributed to events that eventually led to her death.

Sure, I have no idea what his granddaughter was like before the money, and maybe she was already on that collision course, but it made me think about how giving someone a ton of money could seriously negatively impact their life.

I would never give lots of money to people I love. For the most part, they've struggled to get where they are in life, and that successful struggle is a source of pride and self respect.

If you give someone like that a lot of money, it makes all their own accomplishments meaningless in the same way the subject of the story had his own accomplishments made meaningless by such a big windfall. They'll lose a big source of self respect. They'll resent you for it, even if they don't understand why.

You're right about not giving a very large amount of money to people who aren't ready for it. When the protagonist of this article gave money to his daughter, he was basically giving her the same problem he had.

I'd feel obligated to pay for modest things for family and friends, like large holiday and birthday gifts, partial college for nieces and nephews -- maybe buy an "AirBnB condo" near campus and give them free room & board. Maybe give away a cheap good used car every year. Maybe angel invest in a couple of friends' startups.

Maybe it's because of my poor roots, but I would try to help out the people around me who've helped me in the past, in small ways.

It's seems impossible to interact normally with others if the entire world knows you've become wealthy. The interesting thing about SV is that you can cash out of a successful start up and still be completely unknown outside of a smallish circle. You don't necessarily even need to tell your family the scale of your success. You can just get a bit more generous at Xmas and donate more substantially to your favorite charities. People with simply appreciate the extra efforts rather than expecting/demanding access to your new fortune.

Having read too many stories like this, if I do win a lottery, I will spend no more than 0.1-1% per year for the first five or ten years, with the remainder locked in a trust account with my financial adviser, with additional safe-guards so he or his staff can't redeem or abuse the funds. In large part I could do this and feel happy doing it, because I wouldn't feel the necessity to spend my way to happiness and $100k would be more than enough for my own & my family's expenses, including foreign travel, and for "scholarships" for my closest friends' children (most not going to uni for another ten years anyway).

My uninformed advice for this improbable event: I think that's a good policy and you want to keep other people from knowing. Once you have a 10m+ lottery win, keep it out of the press as much as you can.

The interesting thing about the story is that no one knew that he was a millionaire before the lottery. He worked hard and didn't "look rich" so he could have a more normal life. Once he was a lottery winner, he got hit with a bunch of extortions. (Of course, he also did some stupid shit on his own accord.)

It doesn't sound like he "wasted it all" either. It sounds like he's still extremely rich, but that his life is completely fucked up.

One of the issues I think is that the appeal of Big Money to a lot of people is social status. That's what creates the temptations that lead these people to ruin. What most people don't realize is that the highest of the high in social status are torn down and eaten for sport because that's human nature.

Honestly, I can relate a lot of his rich/old fucked-up-ness with my smart/young fucked-up-ness that I had to deal with. When you have something "big", people fuck with you. Most people don't, because very few are that insecure and petty, but you get a disproportionate amount of creepy attention that comes from a very insecure 5% focusing on ~0.5% of the population. In his case, though, it's <0.00001%.

Simple things like renting a house/apartment in another town to live in for a week or a month before collecting, registering a new telephone number, perhaps now even signing up for new dummy email address, for folks to contact you, and never living there or using those after you win, will help to stay anonymous.

Not sure why people claim the money so quickly. I rarely check tickets I've bought within a month or two of the purchase date. I guess the thought of possibly winning is better than knowing that I wasted those few dollars on it, but also that nothing much would really change (other than a new laptop and camera).

I was at the grocery store right before the big Powerball drawing and almost got in line to buy a ticket. Then I realized I wouldn't want to win that much money and wouldn't have the slightest clue what to do with it. It would be more stress handling the money than working.

Now, I wouldn't mind starting a business, selling it, and walking away with a few million or 10, it can give me time to grow into my money. But to win a public lottery worth 19's or 100's of millions... I'll pass.

Won't stop people from coveting what you have.

We (meaning CS types who follow startups) are an unusual crowd. We're introspective and understand human societies and ourselves better than a lot of people do. Our main motivation for wanting money is (a) autonomy, and (b) building cool stuff. It's ambition that drives us, and we'd still work after a huge windfall-- we'd simply work on much better terms, and probably a lot harder (because such wealth takes out the "had to pay bills" excuse for typical middle-class underachievement).

The motivation for most (98%) people who want extreme wealth to want it is social status. That's not always a nasty thing. Sometimes it takes the form of extreme generosity, or large donations to children.

That's why the sensible path is so rarely followed. These aren't stupid or bad people. They try to use their money for its only remaining purpose (social status) to most people at extreme levels, and they get into a self-destructive loop, because high social status itself impairs judgment and leads to more recklessness.

I don't disagree with you starting from the third sentence, but those first two are remarkably self-congratulatory. It's not clear how being a CS type who follows startups leads you to understand human societies better than anyone else.

You may be right on this one, but I like to believe that, in aggregate terms, we're more introspective and enlightened than the general population.

Exceptions exist. Give $100 million dollars to any of the idiots on the Bravo "Silicon Valley" show and you'd have a dead crack whore. [0]

[0]: I have no sexist intent in using "crack whore". This assertion applies with equal strength to the men.

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