{"id":78,"date":"2009-03-12T08:48:50","date_gmt":"2009-03-12T13:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/?p=78"},"modified":"2009-03-12T08:48:50","modified_gmt":"2009-03-12T13:48:50","slug":"my-cousin-won-the-lottery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/12\/my-cousin-won-the-lottery\/","title":{"rendered":"My Cousin Won the Lottery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have never personally known anyone to win the lottery\u2014until now. Recently my first cousin and her husband won the <strong>Georgia Lottery,<\/strong> to the tune of $133\u00a0million. That sum will go a long way, especially in these recessionary times, in <strong>Carrollton, Georgia,<\/strong> population 22,000.  They are now the richest folks in town. On hearing the happy news, my reaction was one of elation\u2014 Heck, who am I kidding? Of course I was remarkably jealous! But the money could not have been bestowed on two more wonderful people. I thought that even before they won $133\u00a0million, I swear. Once the excitement subsided a bit, though, I found myself concerned, because at <strong><em>Worth<\/em><\/strong> we once published a compelling story on the long-term success of lottery winners, and it was not a pretty picture.<\/p>\n<p>Most lottery winners we tracked were destitute within three years of claiming their cash. Our reporting showed that managing money is a critical skill set that many simply have not mastered. My relatives, however, were smarter than the average lottery winner. My cousin is a financial adviser, so he had a head start.  They waited to claim their millions until they had met with smart financial advisers and even smarter tax lawyers, and set up the entity that would receive their winnings. They saved more than $10\u00a0million in taxes. And I\u2019ll bet you a free copy of <em>The Richest Man in Town<\/em> that three years from today, they\u2019ll still be in the high cotton of Carrollton. More later. I&#8217;m off to buy a lottery ticket.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have never personally known anyone to win the lottery\u2014until now. Recently my first cousin and her husband won the Georgia Lottery, to the tune of $133\u00a0million. That sum will go a long way, especially in these recessionary times, in Carrollton, Georgia, population 22,000. They are now the richest folks in town. On hearing the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29,6],"tags":[31,32,30,33],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.richestmanintown.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}