COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) - So you just won the $500
million Powerball jackpot, the second highest in lottery history. Now what?
Perhaps it's time for a tropical
vacation or a new car. There are bills to pay, loans to settle, debts to
square.
Past winners of mega-lottery
drawings and financial planners have some more sound advice: Stick to a budget,
invest wisely, learn to say no and be prepared to lose friends while riding an
emotional roller-coaster of joy, anxiety, guilt and distrust.
"I had to adapt to this new
life, "said Sandra Hayes, 52, a former child services social worker who
split a $224 million Powerball jackpot with a dozen co-workers in 2006,
collecting a lump sum she said was in excess of $6 million after taxes. "I
had to endure the greed and the need that people have, trying to get you to
release your money to them. That caused a lot of emotional pain. These are
people who you've loved deep down, and they're turning into vampires trying to
suck the life out of me."
The single mother kept her job with
the state of Missouri
for another month and immediately used her winnings to pay off an estimated
$100,000 in student loans and a $70,000 mortgage. She spent a week in Hawaii
and bought a new Lexus, but six years later still shops at discount stores and
lives on a fixed income - albeit, at a higher monthly allowance than when she
brought home paychecks of less than $500 a week.
"I know a lot of people who won
the lottery and are broke today," she said. "If you're not disciplined,
you will go broke. I don't care how much money you have."
Lottery agencies are keen to show
off beaming prize-winners hugging oversize checks at celebratory news
conferences, but the tales of big lottery winners who wind up in financial
ruin, despair or both are increasingly common.
There's the two-time New Jersey lottery
winner who squandered her $5.4 million fortune. A West Virginia man who won $315 million a
decade ago on Christmas later said the windfall was to blame for his
granddaughter's fatal drug overdose, his divorce, hundreds of lawsuits and an
absence of true friends.
The National Endowment for Financial
Education cautions those who receive a financial windfall - whether from
lottery winnings, divorce settlements, cashed-out stock options or family
inheritances - to plan for their psychological needs as well as their financial
strategies. The Denver-based nonprofit estimates that as many as 70 percent of
people who land sudden windfalls lose that money within several years.
"Being able to manage your
emotions before you do anything sudden is one of the biggest things," said
endowment spokesman Paul Golden. "If you've never had the comfort of
financial security before, if you were really eking out a living from paycheck
to paycheck, if you've never managed money before, it can be really confusing.
There's this false belief that no matter what you do, you're never going to
worry about money again."
David Gehle, who spent 20 years at a
Nebraska meatpacking plant before he and seven
ConAgra Foods co-workers won a $365 million Powerball jackpot in 2006, used
some of his winnings to visit Australia,
New Guinea and Vietnam. He
left ConAgra three weeks after he won, and now spends his time woodworking and
playing racquetball, tennis and golf.
But most of his winnings are
invested, and the 59-year-old still lives in his native Lincoln. He waited for several years before
buying a $450,000 home in a tidy neighborhood on the southern edge of town.
"My roots are in Nebraska, and I'm not
all that much different now than I was before," Gehle said. "I'm
pretty normal. I never was the kind of guy who went for big, expensive cars or
anything like that. I just want something that runs."
In the first year after he won,
Michael Terpstra would awaken many nights in a panic. Had he slept in? Was he
late to work the night shift?
"At times I'd wake up and this
would all seem like a dream," the 54-year-old said. "I'd have to walk
around the house and tell myself, I did win. I'm not working anymore, and I do
live here. I didn't get drunk, break into someone's house and go to sleep. This
is where I'm supposed to be."
His new home is a roomy, two-story
house in south Lincoln
with a big-screen television and paintings of Jesus on the walls. He no longer
uses alarm clocks and spends his days taking his 92-pound black lab, Rocco, on
walks.
He was terrified when he first won,
convinced that he would lose all of the money and have to return to work. So he
lives carefully off the interest from conservative investments, with help from
accountants and lawyers. He bought the new house and a truck, but struggles to
name any extravagant purchases.
"I can't buy a super yacht. I
can't buy a Gulfstream," he said. "Then again, I don't think I'd use
either one, so why would I buy one?"
That said, some mega-winners still
can't resist the lure of big jackpots, at least not the two-buck chances. On
Tuesday, former ConAgra worker Dung Tran, a Vietnamese immigrant, walked into
the same Lincoln U-Stop where he purchased the winning ticket six years ago and
bought 22 more from the very employee who sold him the first prize-winner, said
cashier Janice Mitzner.
"We joked about it," she
said. "I told him, 'Wouldn't it be something if you won again?'"
Hayes is also hoping to strike rich
again - she bought 10 tickets at a Dirt Cheap liquor store on her way home
Tuesday while speaking with an Associated Press reporter. Unlike many big
winners, she has kept a visible public profile instead of going underground,
appearing on a 2007 reality TV show ("Million Dollar Christmas"),
writing an online Life After the Lottery blog and self-publishing a short book,
"How Winning the Lottery Changed My Life."
"We have this drawing tomorrow,
and if somebody wins, God bless them," she said. "They're going to
need those blessings."
___
Associated Press writers Grant
Schulte in Lincoln, Neb.,
and Josh Funk in Omaha
contributed to this report.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast,
rewritten or redistributed.)
