NorthGeek

Travel the world on a $20 million lottery win

What would you do if you won the lottery?

You hear stories about lottery winners squandering all their winnings, never feeling comfortable in new social circles, becoming depressed from the paranoia and misunderstanding of the amount of money, etc.

This guy won $20M and traveled the world. He is trying visit every single country. He seems to have taken the right steps to ensure his sanity and have a good time. He helped out family and friends, entertained many company investment opportunities, and bought some quirky decorations of course. He also set up multiple teams to manage his money (you don’t trust anyone with that kind of cash).

Some interesting bits from the Reddit conversation:

Relationships: “No, we were just not right for each other. Winning does make me paranoid when I meet someone interesting. It translates into nervousness, something I wasn’t with women before.”

Dating: “Yes, I mostly date trust fund babies now.”

Arriving in a new country: “Hostel for first night, look into renting a place for a month if it is interesting to me. Once bored, start looking into neighboring countries to repeat.”

Craziest travel stories: “Craziest travel story: I was hiking through Nepal and suffering from oxygen deprivation (I didn’t realize it at the time). By the middle of the week I was hallucinating and thought I saw a yeti, Jesus, and Elvis. Reading through my travel diary for that month scares me. I was shot at in Somalia by a child carrying a pistol that should have been too big for him to carry. The bullet passed through our windshield and missed us by a few inches.”

Words of advice for other people aspiring to win the lottery: “It is dumb luck. I was buying ramen at 4 AM at a gas station and didn’t want change back, so I asked for a lottery ticket since it was a buck. I didn’t even check the numbers until a week had passed and was cleaning out my pockets to do laundry.”

Happiness: “An unfortunate consequence of living in a hardcore capitalist/consumer society is that most problems end up becoming money related. “I have to pay off this student loan, I have to pay for medical bills, etc.” It freed me from that stress in life and has given me the opportunity to travel without much restrictions, so in that sense I am happier.”

How to ensure you don’t squander it: “I moved most of the money into a trust that doesn’t allow me to withdraw over a certain amount every year ($95k). Even if I don’t make any interest on the investment that withdrawal amount is enough to keep me happy and won’t run out in my lifetime.”

What things did you buy: “Comics, action figures, video games, and Porsches.”

Supporting tech: “I’m a Linux user so I support open source. I contacted a few developers on sourceforge who created programs I couldn’t live without and offered them money for their hard work. Most declined.”

Satisfying donation: “I gave money to a school near one of my properties in Brazil, it felt good to see them using books that were more updated than the ones I used in grade school.”

Porsches: “I have a collection of Porsches: 550, 944, GT2, GT3, 964, and a Cayman. All but the 550 are regularly driven.”

N.B. NorthGeek does not endorse playing the lottery. Of course we all know it’s just a tax on the mathematically challenged.