> Are there really no lottery winners winning lifetime monthly payouts to study?
There are a bunch, but that’s complicated and notoriously politicized because people with agendas spin the results. For example, there’s a famous and widely cited study of 35,000 lottery winners in Florida where the headlines say almost everyone spent all their winnings after 5 years, and that bankruptcy rates went up after 2 years. It’s misleading because the winners were $150k or less, you’d expect that to be gone after 5 years, and because backruptcy rates went down for the first two years, and then returned to normal.
Googling it right now, I’m actually seeing a lot of headlines like “85% of lottery winners kept their jobs” and “study finds lottery winners are happier”.
> if you gave me 5x average earnings for three years, I wouldn’t quit my job. But if you guaranteed the money for the rest of my life, I’d pursue different activities
I’m not sure why... 5x for me would be life-changing. That’s 15 years’ salary, or 12 years’ savings, without making lifestyle changes. I would absolutely use that money to re-evaluate and try some new things.
There are a bunch, but that’s complicated and notoriously politicized because people with agendas spin the results. For example, there’s a famous and widely cited study of 35,000 lottery winners in Florida where the headlines say almost everyone spent all their winnings after 5 years, and that bankruptcy rates went up after 2 years. It’s misleading because the winners were $150k or less, you’d expect that to be gone after 5 years, and because backruptcy rates went down for the first two years, and then returned to normal.
Googling it right now, I’m actually seeing a lot of headlines like “85% of lottery winners kept their jobs” and “study finds lottery winners are happier”.
> if you gave me 5x average earnings for three years, I wouldn’t quit my job. But if you guaranteed the money for the rest of my life, I’d pursue different activities
I’m not sure why... 5x for me would be life-changing. That’s 15 years’ salary, or 12 years’ savings, without making lifestyle changes. I would absolutely use that money to re-evaluate and try some new things.