When winning is losing
I gather from one of the posts I just saw onTumblr recentlythat somebody had either won a lottery, or landed a huge contract at work. It brought to mind something I've thought about from time to time whenever people have been having that stupid conversation people have about “what you would do if you won the lottery”.
I tend to think winning the lottery (or at least, winning a significant amount of money on a lottery8 digits or more) would be a disaster, for all sorts of reasons. Yes, money would no longer be an issue, but it opens a massive can of worms; No normal bank will take all the money, because their own rules prevent them from dealing with those kind of sums. You would end up having to hire a firm of accountants, and spread the money across a multitude of “investments”. You would probably have to hire a team of auditors to check the accountants too. A significant number of the outer circle of your friends will write begging letters. A small number of your close friends will approach you too. How the hell do you deal with that? If you decide to share a proportion of the money with close relatives and/or friends, how on earth do you draw the line? Where do you stop? How much do you share? They will of course not be able to keep it to themselves, which will cause further problems. If you leave your job and you held an important role, would you arrange to exit gracefully? Would you continue for some time as a consultant? Would you be annoyed about doing so? How would you ever trust anybody again? Would you hide your wealth in order to be treated normally? Would you grow to despise those who treat “haves” differently than “have nots” ?I could go on and on. I think winning a lot of money would be a nightmare. I could see it making you very lonely, and very unhappy, very quickly.
Maybe I'm wrong.