Back in January I took my three-year-old to shop for a party at the Costco in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Reggie LeBlanc checked my receipt as I left the store and made a little magic marker drawing on it for my daughter. He has a genial grandfatherly appearance. As I arranged the child and receipt in the cart for the trip to the car, I overheard two women chatting.
Woman #1: “Do you know who that was? He won $11 million last month in the lottery and he is still coming to work. I would be out of there in a second.”
Woman #2: “He’ll be married to a gold digger within a year.”
Woman #1: “One of the cashiers told me that she’s already trying to get him to marry her.”
I’ve been back to the story a couple of times but I haven’t seen Reggie there again. Next time I will ask what he is up to.
Background: story about the $50 million jackpot split by two Costco workers
He’s on a self help book, “I won the lotto, but didn’t let it ruin my life.”
According to the article, he is 54, so he is not old enough to qualify for Medicare. Maybe he needs Costco’s health insurance coverage. Given today’s healthcare costs, $11 million might not go very far.
I know a couple nearby (southern Virginia) who won a Virginia Lottery contest in 1993. I believe it was about 8 million. After winning, they both swore they’d continue to work at their jobs. Hubby was in sales, wifey was a teacher’s aid at a local elementary school.
That lasted about two months. They both quit working, built a huge home and began to live the country club life.
A friend of mine (who sports an MBA from the University if Virginia as well as a law degree from same and who is a CPA) offered to assist them gratis. They declined.
Postscript:
Twenty years later they are broke, bankrupt and living in a modest rented home. These folks are also pushing 60 years of age.
Kudos to Mr. LeBlanc.
The worst-case scenario with the lottery seems to be winning it.
Why doesn’t the law force lottery winners to take the winnings as an annuity? They wouldn’t be bankrupt years later. Matthew Yglesias makes the same point in this post, this time relating to 20-something sports celebrities.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/01/17/antoine_walker_financial_planner_twentysomething_millionaires_need_better.html
Am I the only reader that wonders if maybe, just maybe, being the door guy at costco is a better job than it seems? I can’t imagine normal shoplifting is a big deal at costco, as very little of what they sell is small and pilfer-able. You would be getting paid to people-watch, and costco’s membership requirements keep out most undesirables, loiterers and troublemakers. It’s more or less non-stop polite interaction. You’re not desk-bound, so you’ll probably live a decade longer than your average peers. It’s beginning to sound like a low-stress dream job.
I’m beginning to think this whole computer thing may have been a mistake.
Murali,
I’m doubtful that structuring NBA contracts as annuities would bring any great benefit to players (and I’m not sure why it’s anyone else’s business anyway). The problem is that teams comprising the NBA have a long history of being profitable, so there is little risk in assuming that the annuity will pay out as promised for the next twenty or thirty years. I’d estimate NBA annuities to be almost as good as US bonds (maybe even better). That would make loaning money to players a pretty solid investment (depending on your priority in the almost inevitable case of personal bankruptcy).
Unless you could find a way to prevent NBA stars from borrowing against their future income, it seems likely that they would just sign away their monthly annuity check for a lump-sum from an investment bank. And even if you did that, they’d probably just turn to grey- or black-market lenders. So now you’re back in the same situation as before, except that the basketball player signs away 50% of his compensation to investors.