“I explained 5m is a lot but not enough where I will be giving it away to family, and they got pissed.”
(Picture: Shutterstock / Pitiya Phinjongsakundit)No need to share the wealth, it seems.
A 24-year-old man won $5.6m (£4m) on the lottery, but he refused to share any of the funds with his family.
On the popular Reddit forum called Am I The Asshole, he said that he, alongside his wife, buy lottery tickets for fun every month. But on this occasion, they had a major win.
They used the money to pay off all of their debts, such as car loans, school loans, and the house mortgage, which he said left them with around $5m to spare.
However, he said he’d read that approximately 70 per cent of lottery winners eventually “go broke after a few years”, and he didn’t want that to become his reality.
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“Me being in the financial sector didn’t want to be in the 70 per cent and also never have to work a real job again. What we did was invest 3m in a combination of mutual funds, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), and preferred stock funds for a very steady hands-off extremely low-risk solid return approach,” he said.
He also added that using $2m, he and his wife purchased a $5m apartment complex “that cashflows and will give a high return with low risk”.
When he informed his family of his endeavours, he initially believed that they would be proud and excited about his financial responsibility, but that wasn’t the case.
“[They] started talking about a huge family trip, how I was paying for all their debt, and more. I explained $5m is a lot but not enough where I will be giving it away to family, and they got pissed,” he said.
As a result of him declining to give away the money, he claimed that his family told him not to speak to them again and that he “wasn’t welcomed in this family”.
Naturally, people found the situation jarring, with some going as far as to say that the family was audacious to ask for money.
“Not the a**hole. My husband and I have talked, jokingly, about what we’d do if we won the lottery, and we both agree that our number one rule would be not giving money to anyone who had the audacity to ask for it,” someone wrote.
“You would be amazed at the number of “relatives” that suddenly appear after a lottery winning. Like ex-spouse to a supposed sixth cousin twice removed. Or arguments on who should get how much.’ We should get more than Louis because we have children, and he doesn’t’. Honestly, I think [the] original poster did the right thing by locking up that money,” another added.
Someone else agreed that the man was in the right but argued that they would still give the family members some money.
“Not the a**hole, and those are all good moves. But I guess it depends on how much you like your family. Personally, I would have thrown my family at least 100k each as a one-time payment. My mom, my grandmother, my in-laws and our nephews; we don’t have a big family. It would be a one-time payment, but honestly, that’s just us. Meanwhile, you don’t want to become and aren’t the family ATM. So having your money tied up is probably smarter than not. I think lottery winners should be allowed to be kept secret for just this reason.”
