
$640 million. Can you even fathom that kind of money? Were you one of the people that rushed to the gas station to purchase a ticket for the Mega Millions jackpot this week? We didn’t buy one, but that was only because we forgot! Hubster and I usually play the lottery when the jackpot gets big, because it doesn’t hurt to dream, right?
What would you have done with the jackpot? Apparently, if you had been the only winner and chose to receive the lump sum, you would have gotten about $250 million. If you chose to receive a yearly payment, you would have gotten $19 million+ for about 26 years.
I think we would have chosen the yearly payment. First, our odds of living for 26 more years are quite good considering we’re in our mid-20s. Second, it would force us to budget our fortune and ensure that we wouldn’t make poor investments with the entire jackpot.
Now comes the fun part…what would you do with that much money?!
I thought about this as I was falling asleep last night, and here are the main things that I came up with:
- Pay off our student loan debt.
- Purchase a property in our home state near family and an oceanfront property on the west coast.
- Make sure that our family’s debts are paid and that none of them needs to worry about living paycheck-to-paycheck.
- Invite our families to Disney World and rent rooms in the nicest on-property resort. I think the kids would absolutely love that!
- Travel to all of the places we’ve ever dreamed of going.
- Invest in the education of our child(ren) and the children in our family.
- Donate to charities, such as Feed the Children, World Vision and local domestic violence shelters.
- Volunteer for local charities.
There are so many important things that someone could do with that much money. How awesome would it be to be one of the people with a winning ticket?!