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Chat Thread - Make BiffTannen Great Again

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if you don't think your life would be impacted if you had less money, please send me $10,000.
 
So yeah, I'd take the million in a second so that my worst enemy can enjoy a life of friends, neighbors and family members begging for money; random people scoping out your morning routine so they can pitch you ideas; and straight-up thieves targeting you for whatever you have.
 
Marshall McLuhan said:
Fun fact: Nearly one third of multi-million dollar jackpot winners eventually declare bankruptcy.

70 percent of lottery winners at large end up bankrupt.
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related fact: people who play the lottery are, by definition, BAD AT MANAGING MONEY
 
Story of Jack Whitaker:

Jack Whittaker, a Johnny Cash attired, West Virginia native, is the poster boy for the dangers of a lump sum award. In 2002 Mr. Whittaker (55 years old at the time) won what was, also at the time, the largest single award jackpot in U.S. history. $315 million. At the time, he planned to live as if nothing had changed, or so he said. He was remarkably modest and decent before the jackpot, and his ship sure came in, right? Wrong.

Mr. Whittaker became the subject of a number of personal challenges, escalating into personal tragedies, complicated by a number of legal troubles.

Whittaker wasn't a typical lottery winner either. His net worth at the time of his winnings was in excess of $15 million, owing to his ownership of a successful contracting firm in West Virginia. His claim to want to live "as if nothing had changed" actually seemed plausible. He should have been well equipped for wealth. He was already quite wealthy, after all. By all accounts he was somewhat modest, low profile, generous and good natured. He should have coasted off into the sunset. Yeah. Not exactly.

Whittaker took the all-cash option, $170 million, instead of the annuity option, and took possession of $114 million in cash after $56 million in taxes. After that, things went south.

Whittaker quickly became the subject of a number of financial stalkers, who would lurk at his regular breakfast hideout and accost him with suggestions for how to spend his money. They were unemployed. No, an interview tomorrow morning wasn't good enough. They needed cash NOW. Perhaps they had a sure-fire business plan. Their daughter had cancer. A niece needed dialysis. Needless to say, Whittaker stopped going to his breakfast haunt. Eventually, they began ringing his doorbell. Sometimes in the early morning. Before long he was paying off-duty deputies to protect his family. He was accused of being heartless. Cold. Stingy.

Letters poured in. Children with cancer. Diabetes. MS. You name it. He hired three people to sort the mail. A detective to filter out the false claims and the con men (and women) was retained.

Brenda, the clerk who had sold Whittaker the ticket, was a victim of collateral damage. Whittaker had written her a check for $44,000 and bought her house, but she was by no means a millionaire. Rumors that the state routinely paid the clerk who had sold the ticket 10% of the jackpot winnings hounded her. She was followed home from work. Threatened. Assaulted.

Whittaker's car was twice broken into, by trusted acquaintances who watched him leave large amounts of cash in it. $500,000 and $200,000 were stolen in two separate instances. The thieves spiked Whittaker's drink with prescription drugs in the first instance. The second incident was the handiwork of his granddaughter's friends, who had been probing the girl for details on Whittaker's cash for weeks.

Even Whittaker's good-faith generosity was questioned. When he offered $10,000 to improve the city's water park so that it was more handicap accessible, locals complained that he spent more money at the strip club. (Amusingly this was true).

Whittaker invested quite a bit in his own businesses, tripled the number of people his businesses employed (making him one of the larger employers in the area) and eventually had given away $14 million to charity through a foundation he set up for the purpose. This is, of course, what you are "supposed" to do. Set up a foundation. Be careful about your charity giving. It made no difference in the end.

To top it all off, Whittaker had been accused of ruining a number of marriages. His money made other men look inferior, they said, wherever he went in the small West Virginia town he called home. Resentment grew quickly. And festered. Whittaker paid four settlements related to this sort of claim. Yes, you read that right. Four.

His family and their immediate circle were quickly the victims of odds-defying numbers of overdoses, emergency room visits and even fatalities. His granddaughter, the eighteen year old "Brandi" (who Whittaker had been giving a $2100.00 per week allowance) was found dead after having been missing for several weeks. Her death was, apparently, from a drug overdose, but Whittaker suspected foul play. Her body had been wrapped in a tarp and hidden behind a rusted-out van. Her seventeen year old boyfriend had expired three months earlier in Whittaker's vacation house, also from an overdose. Some of his friends had robbed the house after his overdose, stepping over his body to make their escape and then returning for more before stepping over his body again to leave. His parents sued for wrongful death claiming that Whittaker's loose purse strings contributed to their son's death. Amazingly, juries are prone to award damages in cases such as these. Whittaker settled. Again.

Even before the deaths, the local and state police had taken a special interest in Whittaker after his new-found fame. He was arrested for minor and less minor offenses many times after his winnings, despite having had a nearly spotless record before the award. Whittaker's high profile couldn't have helped him much in this regard.

In 18 months Whittaker had been cited for over 250 violations ranging from broken tail lights on every one of his five new cars, to improper display of renewal stickers. A lawsuit charging various police organizations with harassment went nowhere and Whittaker was hit with court costs instead.

Whittaker's wife filed for divorce, and in the process froze a number of his assets and the accounts of his operating companies. Caesars in Atlantic City sued him for $1.5 million to cover bounced checks, caused by the asset freeze.

Today Whittaker is badly in debt, and bankruptcy looms large in his future.
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I'm pretty confident I have better personal money management skills than the average lottery winner
 
Why is there some weirdo poster I’ve never heard of named Locomotivebreath sending me PMs ranting about how I’m turftoe and how I killed the previous boards wonderful community?
 
On August 5, 2003, less than a year after Whittaker won the lottery, thieves broke into his car while it was parked at a strip club in Cross Lanes, West Virginia. The thieves made away with $545,000 in cash that Whittaker carried around in a suitcase. When asked why he would carry that much money around with him, Whittaker responded, "because I can".

At an October 11, 2005 hearing related to his January 2003 DUI, a visibly shaken Whittaker lashed out at local law enforcement agencies for focusing on his troubles while failing to arrest anyone in relation to his granddaughter's death, saying "Go after whoever killed my granddaughter with as much zealous [sic] as these butt holes are trying to convict me of something I didn't do."

Whittaker was later sued by Caesars Atlantic City casino for bouncing $1.5 million worth of checks to cover gambling losses. He countersued, claiming that his losses were supposed to be credited due to a slot machine he developed and that they, in fact, owed him money.
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more to that story. anyway, yes, i'm willing to risk it. #anecdotes
 
Marshall McLuhan said:
I think you're over generalizing that a bit. I have a few people in my family who play the lottery. I wouldn't say all of them are bad at managing money. Or is this like a class/race critique you're trying to raise?
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i think we can definitively conclude that they certainly aren't good at math; if you disagree, we can also conclude that you're not good at logic.
 
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