The Lottery Curse - Ep. 19

Winning the lottery is supposed to change your life for the better, but for some jackpot winners, sudden wealth has brought bankruptcy, betrayal, addiction, lawsuits, murder, and the uncomfortable realization that money can solve plenty of problems while creating entirely new ones.

In this episode of Cursed...ish, Daniel and Angela investigate the so-called lottery curse. From the British tabloid sensation who promised to “spend, spend, spend” to Powerball and lottery winners targeted by relatives, scammers, spouses, and strangers, they examine the true stories that turned instant millionaires into cautionary tales.

But do most lottery winners really lose everything? Is the infamous claim that 70 percent of winners go bankrupt even true? The hosts explore hedonic adaptation, financial self-destruction, media selection bias, and research suggesting that most winners actually become more satisfied with their lives.

Then Daniel unveils his extremely sensible and only mildly unhinged 13-step Lottery Curse Avoidance Plan, featuring lawyers, anonymity via Ghostface mask, and a Never-Be-Poor-Again Fund.

Maybe winning the lottery is cursed. Maybe money simply amplifies whatever was already waiting underneath. Either way, check your numbers twice.

Questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share? Send us a hex at uhoh@cursedish.com.

The hosts of Cursed...ish are not responsible for any misfortunes that may befall you while listening to this podcast. By listening to Cursed...ish, you assume all risk of bad luck, ill omens, and unexplained catastrophes.

*Terms and conditions may be upheld by unknown forces.

Transcript

Angela 0:00

It's like if you're if you're like a little rat and you get all this money, just because you're wearing Louis Vuitton doesn't mean you're not a rat underneath.

SPEAKER_03 0:07

You're a millionaire rat, yeah.

Angela 0:09

Yeah, you're just a rat underneath a wrapper. Like you're still there, babe.

Daniel 0:27

Welcome, Accursed Ones, to Cursed Ish, the podcast unfortunate enough to know that winning a fortune doesn't necessarily mean that your luck has changed for the better. I'm Daniel Stevens.

Angela 0:37

And I'm Angela Mattis.

Daniel 0:39

So, Angela, today we are talking about a pretty straightforward curse, and I've got a pretty straightforward question to launch into it for you. Uh, do you ever play the lottery?

Angela 0:48

I probably have played the lottery five times in my entire life.

Daniel 0:52

That's it?

Angela 0:54

Five or less. Yeah.

Daniel 0:56

It's just not something you don't like to sit there and imagine winning and what you would do with your millions of dollars.

Angela 1:02

No, literally one time I got when I was like, how old do you have to be to buy a lottery ticket?

Daniel 1:07

I assume 18, maybe 21.

Angela 1:08

Okay. Well, I was of age. And I remember like waking up and having I probably was I feel like I maybe was just having a lost moment where I woke up and I was like 13, 12, 22, 42, 18, or something. And then I went and I bought a lottery ticket and I was like, what if I just had a psychic moment? And I'm wearing this dress right now because I was at work today, so it didn't work out for me. I still have to have a job.

Daniel 1:35

Your employment status spoils whether you want or not.

Angela 1:38

Yeah, my employment status is not lottery winner. And am I cursed? Maybe, maybe cursed-ish, but I feel like based on some things we're going to learn today, maybe it's for the best if I didn't become a lottery winner. Are you like secretly some big Powerball boy?

Daniel 1:56

No, no, I'm I don't really play the lottery at all. Uh my husband and I kind of have like a sitting rule that whenever it becomes those like outrageous, like over a billion dollar ones, we'll be able to do that. Oh, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Or so yeah, just for the fun of like the outrageousness of like, what would you do if you won over a billion dollars? Um, but no, we I don't like to to spend money on things that I know are not going to change my life. I do like to scratch that itch by entering some free sweepstakes sometimes. I'm a huge fan of the HGTV Dream Home smart home giveaways. Those are free entries, and like if you win, I think like the most recent one, I mean, there's like you can take the house or cash option, and the most recent prize for one of those, I don't remember which one, it's like you either get like a two million dollar house in Orlando, Florida, which is like maybe not the greatest thing ever, um, or you get like 700 grand. And it's like either of those would be amazing, life-changing months, and it's free to enter, they just probably sell your data. So I like to get my little gambling fix for free by doing the free uh sweepstakes, sort of.

Angela 2:58

Okay. If you won the lottery, like say you did one of those billion dollar ones, what would you like what would you do if you won a big old Powerball sweep?

Daniel 3:09

Um, spoiler alert, because at the end of the episode, I'm going to give you a 13-step lottery curse avoidion plan. So we'll get to that at the end. But I do have a plan, my own personal plan of what I will do when I win the lottery.

Angela 3:22

Wait, should I should I say what I would do, and then we'll see how much of a dumbass I sound in comparison to this 13-point manifesto.

Daniel 3:30

Well before I give you my plan, I'll ask you what we'll talk about the curse, and then also say, Angela, what would you do? And then uh we can compare it to my the plan that I got to, you know, think out all for days and in the weeks leading up to doing this episode. So we'll put you on the spot.

Angela 3:45

Okay, I'm very curious who I will become in that moment.

Daniel 3:49

But I guess it sort of seems clear, at least from my end. Uh, I don't know about necessarily for sure. It doesn't sound like you're as much of a uh lottery fantasist as I am, but you know, I've already got my winning spent, letters of resignation drafted, my bequeaths bequothen, and you know, my fabulous life of luxury. I've already kind of got it planned, but it sort of seems like I'm getting at least one step ahead of myself.

Angela 4:11

Do you have any allocations for, say, a best friend of 20 years? Anything in that stack of papers you seem to have already drawn up?

Daniel 4:22

In in my 13-point plan, there may be a section for you know supporting your podcast co-host. We'll get to that. But yeah, so maybe step one before I get to all those things, maybe I should take a step back and just sort of take a breath between writing these post-dated checks and say, you know, what about these decades of headlines that describe cautionary tale after cautionary tale about the woes that follow a big win for some quote-unquote fortunate people? And you do start to notice that a very different story takes shape. So I think if I'm gonna, we're gonna talk about the lottery, we should just kind of go back and talk about what is this so-called lottery curse. Um, there's often the statistic you'll see thrown around. It's kind of like the starting point of this is supposedly the National Endowment for Financial Education. These folks have found that 70% of lottery winners uh end up bankrupt in just a few years. A huge spoiler alert. Those people themselves have had to come out and say, We never did this study, we don't find this. There's just this is nonsense. So this is just like useful. Wait, what? Yeah, you'll like see this. No, not at all. You'll like see it reported, but the the people that often get quoted, they had to like release a statement being like, No, we didn't do this. That's just not a thing. So we can get to the statistics a little later. Why don't we start? If you will indulge me for a moment, would you believe that I want to talk about the history and the etymology behind the lottery?

Angela 5:47

Okay, well, am I not surprised? But all right.

Daniel 5:50

Just indulge me, please.

Angela 5:51

I'm willing to take a gamble on this section of your podcast.

Daniel 5:56

We'll see if it enriches your understanding of the lottery. Um, I guess lotteries sort of seem to be kind of a human-wide in all cultures. We all figure out this idea of like, hey, let's maybe all take a chance at winning a big prize by buying into a you know little pieces. Some of the earliest known lotteries, this may be legend, but it seems like they maybe happened um around 200 BC during the Han Dynasty in China, maybe as government-funded lotteries to raise to raise funds for public works, including the Great Wall. Um, there were also things that Romans held. They were kind of like dinner party raffles. It was like you would show up at a dinner party and like you were guaranteed a win, and it was kind of a fun way to give away presents to everyone, sort of like a weird white elephant, maybe, or a raffle.

Angela 6:42

Okay, sounds fun. Well, do you know what kinds of things they were raffling off? Because I think about the Romans, and I'm like, that could get dark fast.

Daniel 6:51

Yeah, and let's probably not look into those details.

Angela 6:55

Okay, that dark and dreary place. Yeah.

Daniel 6:57

So they they kind of did it as like dinner party thing. Eventually, uh, some Roman emperors were were holding closer to what we now think of as a lottery, you know, selling tickets to buy in to s to to raise funds for public works. From there, kind of like throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, you start to see it in different places at different times. Some of the earlier European examples are in the 15th century. There were lots of lotteries being held in the Netherlands, specifically in Burgundy and Flanders, which made me think, is there ever a diamond as the prize of a lottery?

Angela 7:30

I bet I bet any diamond who was put through the degradation of being the prize for something like a lottery, she would have killed you within weeks.

Daniel 7:41

Yeah, so if if you're wondering what we might be talking about, you can go back and listen to our episodes about the Sansi Diamond and the Hope Diamond. Both kind of seem like they maybe have crossed through with a lottery at some point in their days, potentially.

Angela 7:52

And those girls are some of them wild, wild gems.

Daniel 7:55

So yeah, so early lotteries in the Netherlands, also Italy in the 15th century, and then spread throughout Europe into, you know, France, you uh the United Kingdom, and then into the Americas. And by now, by modern life, you know, everywhere in the world. The word lottery actually came from the old English chlot, which meant an object used to determine one's piece or share. Um, it also had some biblical connotations about fate or destiny, like casting your lot. Um, we still see that, yeah, we still see that kind of old definition. Now lot means, you know, a lot of something, a multitude of something. That's a newer use of the word. The original word was like a piece of your whole or your fate, and that's still seen in like casting your lot or drawing lots or even like a lot of land today. But then that word went into the romance languages like French, where it then became lottery. Ooh, lottery, and then English took that word back, and that's how we have modern lottery.

Angela 8:55

And now it's lottery.

Daniel 8:56

Yeah, lottery, yeah.

Angela 8:57

Lottery. No, it's million-dollar powerball, baby.

Daniel 9:02

Yeah. But but as you can see, it's become like a worldwide phenomenon. There are cultural touchstones, for example. The Spanish Christmas lottery is the biggest lottery giveaway in the world, and it's like one of the biggest parts of Spanish culture. Every Christmas, everyone buys their tickets. Theirs is a little, it's like a little different than what we think of as a lottery, in that um, there's the top prize, which they call El Gordo. That's only four million euros, and they give away like several of those, and those are all actually divided up. So usually people win like hundreds of thousands of euros, so it's like thousands of people winning still life-changing amounts of money, but not like the 90 hundred million dollar giant jackpots that we're used to in the States.

Angela 9:43

I feel like I wonder I kind of want to nerd out in a different direction, and I would love to see some like data from something like that versus like a billion-dollar Powerball, because I just keep thinking of like in succession when it's like six million dollars is a death sentence, or it's like a what is there's like a perfect line when um Greg is like talking about wanting to get six million dollars from his in an inheritance from his grandpa, and um uh Tom is like six million dollars, like you're better off with nothing, Greg, than like basically saying like it's you know not enough to retire. It's it's basically like a nest egg, but it's not anything to like do anything big, huge, and grand with. And I honestly feel like that's much more manageable and far less like to win a couple hundred thousand dollars, that's really exciting and that's life-changing. And I wouldn't ever say no to that, but it's on a whole other scale, a much healthier scale, I would assume, than suddenly becoming a billionaire overnight because or even like a crazy multi-multi-millionaire, because like I don't think people understand the scope and the reality of what happens when you suddenly become a hundred thousand hundred millionaire, you know?

Daniel 11:04

Well, and that's like we'll see the like they in the US, the mega millions Powerball by the year 2022, there was like eye popping two billion dollar jackpots and it's a lot of people.

Angela 11:15

Yeah, that's probably one that I got a ticket for, but also yeah, like what would you have like what would you have done with that? I guess actually I should be pondering that, right? Because I don't want to be put on the spot. Okay.

Daniel 11:27

Well, I guess let's let's see what some people did do with their money. We're gonna go through some examples. So, like, obviously there are the news media talks about this curse of you know, victims of the lottery curse of as cautionary tales. And I guess so. Step one of trying to figure out how to avoid the curse is looking at what it supposedly does, how it destroys people's lives, how it, you know, gets in there and turns fortune into misfortune. Real quick side note, when I'm talking about these stories, I'm just gonna omit people's names on purpose, you know. These were not people who looking for fame or anything, they're just people who their numbers came up, and then if bad things happen, their stories kind of turned into tabloid fodder, news media fodder. Right. And it's not necessary to know their identities to see the larger story that was woven from each individual thread. And as we've said before, that larger story is what we're really interested in. So sources for all these stories are available in our show notes, but you know, we're just not going to talk about their exact identities because these are some very real people, and they're not necessarily representative of winners as a whole. These are, to be clear, cherry pick stories that the news media who were not doing this blindly or statistically speaking, or doing anything but looking for good stories. So these are one might say exceptional stories of winners that rose above to media prominence over the average people who continue living average normal lives.

Angela 12:54

All right. I accept this as how we are going to move forward, and I want to say um you're being very much all of the former cog in the media machine that we would expect of you, Daniel. Thank you for this consideration.

Daniel 13:08

Yeah, you can take the cog out of the machine, but you can't take the machine out of the cog.

Angela 13:15

I kind of wish the word cog was like one of those things that had like a double meaning that made that even better, but we'll take it.

Daniel 13:21

Be the change you want to see in the world. We can make that word a double entendre with enough work on our own. Um, anyway, let's get to I found kind of what seems like the first of these cautionary tales that went all the way back to 1961. And would you believe it? It was the British tabloids. Those, as we've come to know, those cheeky little bastards seem to owe. Exactly, yeah. But in 1961, there was a famous case where actually the wife of a winner, someone who won 152,000 pounds, which is about 4.3 million pounds in today's money. So a good chunk of change, like you said, getting close to that six million dollar amount essentially. But she was quoted in in the tabloids where she was asked what their plans were with the money, and she was quoted as saying, quote, spend, spend, spend. So they like sort of latched onto this and followed this couple. As yes, the couple did make some bad choices, and they did do some lavish spending on cars, jewelry, furs, parties, a home. They said a ranch style home, like that was the like some sort of fanciness. And I was like, that seems like a pretty rational home to me. Yeah, but you know what?

Angela 14:35

It's always furs. And I know that that was like such a thing. Even back when I was in like high school, college, I worked at department stores, and they would have it was like the end of the era for the fur salons. And so for like millennials, I guess, like for us, we're all too just we're just too broke. We don't have money for furs. But it always sounds like one of those like fake, like fake news kind of things, like, oh, they were buying furs. Like that sounds like you're just making uh something for like the sensational stereotype story. But actually, back in the day, I'm pretty sure that was if you had some money, you went out and you got yourself a dead animal belt and you draped it over your body and you went out to go party. Yeah.

Daniel 15:21

So the tabloids did follow this couple and kind of made fun of them as they started to have all their money be spent. Unfortunately, about four years after uh after they won, they had, you know, we're already starting to see some financial troubles. The husband did die in a car crash, which is also tragic.

Angela 15:39

That's tragic, but like I thought you were going elsewhere with that story. So I was like relieved, and then I was suddenly like, oh no, no, no. Not something to be relieved about, Ang.

Daniel 15:51

Yeah, so very unfortunate. But and so he dies in a car crash, and then shortly after that, the last of their funds were eaten up by a tax bill. Years later, she would actually reflect back on that tabloid moment, and she was kind of like caught off guard. They were they were there going to like accept their winnings to claim their winnings. She didn't really know that all of a sudden she was gonna have to give a quote, and she kind of just like she says that she, you know, just kind of flippantly made a out of her goddamn mind like anybody else would be. Yeah, exactly. Like she didn't really think I'm gonna memorialize how people think of me right now in this moment. Yeah. And so she sort of just said, like, you know, it was just kind of a flippant comment. Um, and then she did say that they ended up making a musical about her life based on her autobiography, but there was a musical called Spend Spend Spend based on her life. And she kind of lamented that like that one moment of her life became this iconic thing that defined her. So it's just like they did they did spend a lot, but people just sort of like focused on it and then joyed laughing at them, sort of as they as these people who had no idea what to do with millions of dollars, yeah, didn't make maybe the greatest choices. So maybe those people they were like they didn't have financial literacy, they got all this money. There's another famous case of an already successful businessman. He won over $113 million. That was the lump sum after tax payout. So he won hundreds of millions of dollars, but after everything's said and done, he actually walked away with $113 million in his bank account. Um, this was in 2002. Uh, you would expect he's a successful businessman, he's not gonna squander this, do whatever. But somehow that's not quite what happened. So he wasn't able to protect himself from the just onslaught of requests for for money, for help, for business investments, for anything. He also made a lot of choices that turned out poorly for himself, uh, some bad investments. He was eventually quoted as saying multiple times that he wishes he never would have won the lottery because he started to not be able to trust anyone. He kind of always thought everyone was just out for money. He was burglarized multiple times. At one point, over 500 grand was stolen from his car. I'm not really sure why he had so much money in his car. That seems like a bigger story there.

Angela 18:06

Yeah, yeah, like I don't think I have as much sympathy about that one. I keep $500,000 in my purse sometimes, but I would never leave it in my car.

Daniel 18:17

Yeah. Like rookie move. You keep that close to your person, yeah. Yeah. He also, his wife eventually left him. A house of his burnt down, his daughter died of cancer. Lots of bad things, not all related, you know, bad things happen in people's lives.

Angela 18:30

Did he like use the money to buy a diamond or something? Maybe, yeah, yeah. Because it sounds like this man's got a double duty working against him of curses.

Daniel 18:40

He also had some problems with drinking and gambling, some DUIs, some accusations of assault, and many lawsuits. So he maybe was just a shitty guy, to be honest, who won a lot of money and made a lot of bad choices. Um, another example is a Florida truck driver who won $30 million in 2006. He apparently was a great guy, very generous with all his family and friends. Unfortunately, public fame of knowing that, as with that last guy, a lot of people came in looking for money. In this instance, a very specific woman entered this man's life. Uh, she said she wanted to write a book. Be careful if you get too poor for a second. Excuse me? Yeah, yeah. She said she wanted to write a book about him. So she she put up this front. She eventually took control of his assets.

Angela 19:29

Do you by chance have any more information about like the script she used? Or, you know, how I need I just need all the details I can get for no reason.

Daniel 19:39

You can maybe ask her. I'll tell you where to find her. Spoiler alert, she's in prison because this man, the winner, eventually after she entered his life, he eventually went on to disappear. Um, and she continued to spend his money. He was eventually found dead of a gunshot wound under a concrete slab, and she was convicted of his murder. So she 100% kind of infiltrated his life, got his trust, took control of his accounts. By the time he was dead, she had spent all his money, and uh she is now uh in jail convicted of his murder.

Angela 20:10

She tried to be H. H. Holmes and she fumbled the bag.

Daniel 20:14

Yeah, yeah. Um another similar case is a Chicago businessman who won a million dollars in 2012.

Angela 20:21

Oh, a million dollars, never mind.

Daniel 20:23

Well, he opt he opted for the lump sum, pay out of $425,000. He claimed the check. The check was issued. The next day he fell ill and died in his apartment. For a while, this was thought to be natural causes. Eventually, though, after some requests of suspicious family members, a Cook County medical examiner would declare that he was poisoned with cyanide. And they exhumed his body, they did further testing, but there was no further conclusive evidence. And they've done over the years, they've done interviews with his wife, his daughter, and his father-in-law, who were with him the night he died. And they all the dead man's family believes that she and her father-in-law poisoned him, and they like there was fighting over them taking that money because he had just won the money. No one has ever been charged, but his his his death is still called a homicide.

Angela 21:17

Okay, that doesn't make any sense because I mean, maybe to them it did, but to me, I'm like, why would you do that?

Daniel 21:24

Because I mean she got his money.

Angela 21:26

Yeah, but she would have had it anyways. They were married. All she had to do was, I don't know, like, couldn't you have gotten divorced and then asked for alimony based off of because like they didn't have a that's only 425 grand that you got like also nothing to kill someone over, like maybe what it was like the 2006 that probably got you a little bit further than it'll get you today. But yeah, this whole thing is just like idiots.

Daniel 21:50

Well, and then here's another case of a Canadian woman. She won five million Canadian dollars in 1991. Her husband was a physician, they spent half Happily for it some seems like a few years. Eventually, though, her husband found out she was funneling some of the winnings away to a child she had had with a different man. Yeah, so actually, kind of. Um, and then the husband got like upset about that and eventually poisoned her to death. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. So it's like many times these people's loved ones seem to be coming after them.

Angela 22:24

And it's a lot of poison going on. Like of all the ways, guys. Wow.

Daniel 22:29

Yeah. Um, there was another guy, another Illinois man. He won 20 million. Yeah, the Illinois does not be a good one.

Angela 22:36

Oh my god, are we uh I'm so picking up on a thread here. Musicals Chicago, Murder. Should we write something? Should we come up with some sort of a Broadway production about a town full of gangsters? Yeah, and perhaps people just killing people for their own personal gain and ambition.

Daniel 22:58

Maybe. Maybe, maybe you're onto something. Well, um, this Illinois man won $20 million in 1996. He and his wife divorced shortly after. And they split just kidding.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

I don't know why I'm being such a I'm being so obnoxious this whole time. Stop.

Daniel 23:16

So he actually like amicably split the money 50-50 with his wife. Very cool. He then remarried and then made the unfortunate decision to move to Florida.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

Oh yeah.

Daniel 23:28

So while living in Florida, he started to support his new wife's two of his new wife's sisters because they didn't have jobs and he was just a big deal.

Angela 23:36

Oh damn, I thought you meant two of his new wives. And I was like, Florida, baby.

Daniel 23:42

No. Well, he was having an affair with one of those sisters-in-law. Eventually, that same sister-in-law, she and her boyfriend got the idea to kidnap him and hold him hostage for his money. It ended up with him being murdered. They're now in prison.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Oh my god.

Daniel 23:58

Another story that deals with marriage. No death this time, though. I think we're done with death stories. No more, no more people killing their their spirits. Okay, fine. Boring.

unknown 24:06

Okay.

Daniel 24:07

Well, this one's not boring still, though. So a California woman, she won $1.3 million in 1996. It seems like her marriage was on rocky ground because she had the great idea to conceal this win from her then husband and filed for divorce 11 days later. She also claimed the win under her mom's address and tried to, you know, get it for herself. Yeah, but the problem is, is that's super illegal, especially in California. And once her ex-husband found out, he was able to sue her. And under laws about fraudulent concealment of marriage assets, he was awarded the entire prize. So he literally got all of it and she got none of it. Which is like real fucked up, but kind of hilarious.

Angela 24:48

What a feisty little Uno reverse card.

Daniel 24:52

Yeah, the ultimate. Also, one other final story I saw that was just like too indicative of what I think really is behind this supposed curse is there was a woman who won two mult over $1 million jackpots in her life. And both times she spent it all and went into bankruptcy afterwards. And it's just like she mostly spent it gambling in Atlantic City, and it's like, first of all, of all places, Atlantic City, at least, at least go waste your fortune somewhere. Like much nicer than the city.

Angela 25:22

Monaco, yeah. Or like Vegas of all places, if you must. Have some self-respect Atlantic City.

Daniel 25:30

Yeah. But like she won, she was like rags to riches back to rags, and then riches again, and then back to rags again. And it's like, what is it about some people just maybe can't be helped? And that sort of seems like what it really comes down to. There's like maybe a bunch of things behind these stories, which you know, there was this study done back in the 1970s, and it it's kind of famously called the winners are no happier study, because it supposedly said that they talked to lottery winners, a control group, and also like accident victims, and tried to figure out how they all conceptualize of happiness afterwards, and found supposedly that lottery winners are no happier than average people or even people who had bad experiences in their life. And it's not really what the study says. What they really did show is that it's not that these people take less pleasure from life anymore, it's just they sort of adjust their pleasure level to these new their new bounds. You have now this like new newfound wealth, and you just kind of get used to like, oh yeah, some nice things are gonna happen to me, and my baseline of what's nice has gone up a little, and it's called hedonic adaptation.

Angela 26:41

I'm willing to risk whatever it takes to have anything about me be hedonic. Like hedonic adaptation sounds incredible. Um, but like I think maybe I wonder if it's two-pronged. So one, I totally know what you mean, where like, I mean, we see it with our billionaire class where they're just fucking idiots launching rockets into space and doing disgusting things because they're so bored and the world no longer like holds any intrigue for them because they can have everything. Like that is fully, I think, a thing. And I even think about it like I travel a lot. My trips are so much more enjoyable because I, you know, have to save up. I don't, I mean, like I only can do a few trips per year. And when I go on those trips, it's a really special time. Like, I can't imagine how boring it would get if I had, you know, a huge bank account, endless supplies of cash, and I was just like, oh, I think I'm gonna, like, I'm hungry for pasta, let me go to Rome. Like that loses its luster so incredibly fast. But I other I think that the other piece of it though is I think about a lot of people who have generational wealth because sometimes when I'm like bogged down by life and I'm just like, oh God, how nice would it be if I had just been one of those people that like was born into a family where I had a trust fund and I got like I think of all the creative things I would do and all the books I would write and all the time I would have to do whatever the heck I want. But those people are like categorically the most depressed people in our society. And it's because they didn't earn it. And so, like, there is something to be said for earning things, and I feel like that probably like you go and you buy a Powerball ticket, you didn't earn anything. You walked into a gas station and coughed up five bucks and they sh you know spit out a little chip for you that had some numbers on it. I don't even think you have to pick your numbers anymore. It's not even fun. Yeah, um, and so like there is no there's no earning in it. And I feel like it's probably almost kind of hits you like a double whammy if you win a lottery.

Daniel 28:43

Yeah, there's definitely the I'm sure there's some imposter, yeah, whether I earn this or not.

Angela 28:47

Yeah, like you didn't earn it, but you also are suddenly just like, oh, nothing has any kind of value anymore because I can have everything. Oh, this guy did we just like get a little of the dark for a second here?

Daniel 28:57

Yeah, I mean, some some heavy things to be thinking about. I'm feeling my whole mood shifting. Definitely some be careful what you wish for here. Um another thing, another thing is the the social aspects that change. I mean, to all of a sudden go to being the person with money among all your family and friends, no matter what you do, no matter how clear you are, no matter what boundaries you set up, there's always going to be in the back of your head what is the real motivation happening right now, what's going on. And then on top of that, yeah, all the people coming out of the woodwork trying to find you, just oh like it, you know, it just it just really seems like awful. I mean, it seems like it would become like a every social interaction would be full of like second guessing, delicate balancing, and like always just never feeling like you could just have a real conversation with someone. I feel like that would just be I think that would be the one where I would just be like, this is awful. I don't ever want to like have this, and you would never be able to unring that bell.

Angela 29:54

I feel like again, like we see that with like athletes who I also am seeing a lot of similarities to athletes because they say that like most people in the NFL are like out of money within a few years after leaving because like you make this massive influx of money and it you are earning it, but like are you really like uh I would beg to differ or I would like argue that there is no such thing as a job that's worth a million dollars. Like there is no amount of being a CEO, there's like nothing that you could possibly do in a 30-year career to warrant being worth making more than I'll maybe we'll bump it up to like a few million dollars, I guess, because if you are really good at strategy and you're able to like bring money in and whatever, I digress. But like to be an athlete, technically you're just playing a game, you're just making a fuck ton of money for it. And so you see a lot of people who will like stay with their high school sweethearts or who will really like clutch on to the people who were with them before they got famous, because yeah, like I can only like they either have to be as equally famous as you, or they have to be have been there or like as equally successful as you, so they don't want anything from you, or they have to have been there from the beginning, I feel like.

Daniel 31:10

Yeah, and I mean, apart from whether you earn it or not, I mean, it's just a simple fact that just getting a lot of money all of a sudden isn't gonna change who you were, it's not gonna make you smarter with money. If you had bad financial instincts before, you're gonna have b bad financial instincts after, whether it's a lottery win, getting a bunch of money from you know, your sports career, even CEOs can be financially, you know, they might not be the smartest in personal finances. So just getting a lot of money is probably realistically just gonna amplify those bad decisions. So they did some studies finding that previously financially distressed winners who won prizes between $50,000 and $150,000, even though it delayed bankruptcy, bankruptcy was basically inevitable for those people because it was like if you were previously on that track, getting some money almost never changed that. It's very unlikely for it to change people for that. Even multi-million winners, they just like they lose scope of this huge number, like, oh, I have a hundred million dollars, that'll never run out. Those numbers are still very finite, as much as you think you can never outspend those, time after time, people do it with bad decisions, it seems.

Angela 32:21

Yeah, plus like you know how they say, like, even if you like if you're depressed or whatever and you go on a trip, you're just depressed wherever you are on the trip.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

Yep.

Angela 32:31

It's like if you're if you're like a little rat and you get all this money, just because you're wearing Louis Vuitton doesn't mean you're not a rat underneath.

SPEAKER_03 32:39

You're a millionaire rat.

Angela 32:41

Yeah, you're just a rat underneath a wrapper. Like you're still there, babe. You unless you really put the work and the effort into some personal growth with all that money, you're still just gonna be whoever you were when you first started. And if that person is not equipped for the game, then I'm sorry, but you're out.

Daniel 33:03

Yep. And that's sort of, I'm sure there's plenty of people who say, wow, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change my life. They took the reins, they made smart choices, and they are living happily ever after. Those just aren't the people we hear about in the news. And that's my next point is there's this whole statistical aspect to this. This is selection bias. The media is looking for these cases. There's, you know, of however many ex lottery winners there are, we're looking at, you know, a fraction of a fraction of those winners who maybe, yeah, were of the of any group of people, were the people who are gonna make bad choices no matter what, or who maybe had not even they made bad choices, who had horrible people in their lives who infiltrated their lives or who came to do those bad things. Yeah. There's bad people everywhere. There's it's not the cause of the lottery. I mean, of course, money and wealth is gonna attract bad people. That's true if it's the lottery, that's true if you're a CEO, that's true if you're a you know, just a famous celebrity, they have to deal with security issues and everything. So it's it's truly like we're just ignoring that. There's like base rate occurrences where these things would just happen in any group of people, and now we're applying a lottery curse to it.

Angela 34:07

Yeah, actually, I remember watching one time a documentary that was about the lottery curse, and it showed like multiple, like they told stories of people that were, you know, these stories that you've just been sharing of like people who just absolutely just fucked it up miserably. And then I remember they had a story of this couple who was just really conservative with their money and like really thoughtful about their spending. And I think they like set boundaries really early on of like who in their life was going to get what amounts, and they were just very good at being like, and then we're done. And like they also didn't spend extravagantly. I think they just kind of like bought a nice house, but not a crazy mansion that was gonna then going to cost all this money and taxes and upkeep. They just got like a house that felt nice for them for the size. And I remember there was like a quote from the girl, I remember her saying, Yeah, sometimes like we'll like treat ourselves to a nice vacation, and you know, we'll be walking through, I don't remember exactly how she set it up, but she basically was like, I'll see like a fancy diamond necklace and I'll see it on like a billboard or something, and it will be, you know, the price tag will be in the millions of dollars, and I'll look at it and be like, Oh, I could buy that. But like that's it.

Daniel 35:16

But I don't.

Angela 35:16

It's just like a fun thought of like, oh, I could buy that.

Daniel 35:19

And that would be wild. Like, she she had a good head on her shoulders, and um yeah, and and and that's realistically the the case the most of the uh most of the time. There was a major Swedish study I found. They did it on lottery winners, they tracked them for up to 22 years. They did find that greater lottery wealth produced sustained increases in overall life satisfaction with lasting effects for over a decade. Day-to-day happiness and mental health rates were not as affected, so it may not be completely case closed, but the general consensus is these lottery winners overall are happier, they're doing fine. So it's sort of like that kind of puts a pin in it. But then to me, it's like in the end, if I won the lottery, as much as I can say I don't think there's a lottery curse, I can still look at what has happened to people and say, well, I'm going to avoid that. There's still something there. It may not be a real physical curse, but I don't want those same things to happen to me. So what do you think? You know, you see your lottery ticket, you've just won a hundred million dollars. What do you think is your first step? What was how do you how do you avoid the curse, Angela, now that you've heard of the curse? And then I'll tell you my 13-point plan.

Angela 36:24

I feel, I mean, I don't like a gold rush. Um, sorry, I'm trying to use Taylor Swift lyrics because I don't know about you, but I'm feeling 22. I'm trying to see as many times as I can toss a Swift lyric into one of our podcasts. So, um my 13-point plan. I don't think I have 13 points because I would have had to have days to sit and think this through. But I think I kind of alluded to it before. I, first of all, love the idea of doing it under like um an LLC or something so that it's not trackable. Because there are laws about having to publicly state who won. So that's like how it happens is like it gets out in put into public record and then the locusts swarm. So I would nip that in the bud. Like they say the minute you win the lottery, you call a lawyer. Yep. So I would call a lawyer.

Daniel 37:15

That is step four of my I was gonna say, should we start?

Angela 37:19

I would call a lawyer. I'm gonna count. I would call a lawyer, number one. I would open up an LLC super, super fast, and then claim the ticket under that LLC. And then I would also get a money manager, and with that money manager, I would set up like a very, very detailed budget. And it would be the kind of budget that for me would feel very extravagant to a degree. Like it would be like, like if I was making a million dollars a year post-taxes, that would be more than enough. And if it wasn't enough, that would mean that I would need to maybe have a therapist on retainer who specifically deals with like gambling, that's four, with like gambling and like addiction and things like that. And like maybe I'm sure there are people who kind of specialize in this sort of thing and maybe even work with like athletes. So I would have one of them on retainer and I would have basically some sort of like predetermined setup of like, okay, money manager, if I'm coming to you and I have run out of my million dollars, like we come up with a plan together, and that plan involves me getting my ass to that therapist. So I think I would do those kinds of things, and then I would also set up some sort of like a charity so that people who did, but that charity would be very discerning and it would kind of be like there would be some sort of purpose or goal that made it a clear definition of like who we give money to and when. So I would set up some really clear boundaries there.

Daniel 38:43

Like the human fund.

Angela 38:45

I don't know what that is. What's that?

SPEAKER_03 38:46

It's a Seinfeld reference for a fake charity.

Angela 38:50

Okay, so like a vague generic. Sorry. You said something about 22 earlier, and I was trying to lead you down the Swifty path because I don't know about you, but I'm feeling 22. And now you said a Seinfeld reference. What other points do we need to hit before we're done with this podcast? Before we've hit all of our little cursed and jokes. I also feel like um if I had to have anything that I've said in this podcast come back at me to be my like spend, spend, spend, I would like to put up for nomination for your consideration, dear listener. Rat and a rapper.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

Rat and a rat. Rat under a rapper.

Angela 39:25

And I meant W-R-A-P-P-E-R. Yeah. Um anyway, um, no, back to my genius plan that I'm coming up with on the spot.

Daniel 39:35

You're pretty much in line with my plan.

Angela 39:38

Or you never actually clarified your plan before. Are you just ripping me off? Um I also what was I up to like five or something? I feel like I would need to structure myself so that because I would hate to lose the whimsy of life. I would hate to lose the joy of being able to go, but I would like probably travel on a different level. Like I would, you know, stay at fancy rut like fancy hotels, but I would have to like make it some sort of like I feel like I need to gamify my life a little bit. And if I had all that money, I would extra need to gamify it or like create, like I'm a very carrot-driven person. So I feel like I'm being so detailed about this, but I'm just like imagining it where I'm like, okay, I would maybe give myself like a certain amount of vacations per year, but those vacations were going to be like, you're going to go and do a spa vacation in Singapore, and you are going to do like incredible spa experiences at all of the most incredible like hotels, and then you're gonna eat incredible food. Like it would be literally like, let's just be absolutely balls to the walls three times a year. Like no holds barred, just like baby wants, baby gets. Bacanalia. Oh, yes, yes, now we're talking. Um yeah, so that is my plan. Oh, I think I would also, of course, I mean, I don't have I'm very blessed to have family members who like I'm sure like other people would probably come out of the woodwork a little bit, but my like siblings and parents would just be like, Oh, cool, like that's good for you. And I would like take them all on a like a nice vacation. And of course it would be very much like, oh, you know, open door or whatever, but like my siblings, I'm very, very grateful and lucky to have a very supportive, just like we're all very independent, even keeled. Like it would be not only if like somebody got got weird, it would be like, what the fuck? But like my entire family would be like, What the fuck? And then we would like get them in line. So I'm not as worried about that aspect of it, which is I'm very grateful for that. Yeah, but I think did I cover um did I cover all my bases?

Daniel 41:46

Um I maybe saying no to your podcast host when he asks you for millions of dollars.

Angela 41:52

Yeah, you can have some money. You can have some money, it's fine. I'll give you some money.

Daniel 41:57

Well, I won't need it. I've got my own lottery winnings, and I've got my own plan. Let me give you my 13-point plan real quick.

Angela 42:02

Dango, I highly doubt that there are any odds that you and I would both be lottery winners. So you do need to take some things into consideration.

Daniel 42:09

Well, maybe I don't need the lottery. Mine might just be claiming my throne in Orlando after I win the HGTV Dream Home or whatever. So, either way, here is my plan.

SPEAKER_00 42:18

Okay.

Daniel 42:18

My 13-step lottery curse avoidion plan. Quick note this is for my personal use only. This is not financial advice. Do not take financial, legal, or frankly any advice from this podcast. Gotcha. Okay. Step number one, check that I actually won, double check. The last thing I need to be doing is being like, oh, I won the lottery. And then someone's like, Dan, classic move. You read the wrong number. Yeah. So just gonna do that, nip that in the bar. Um, number two, lock down the ticket, lock down the evidence. If the official rules tell you to sign it, sign it, put it in a very, very safe place, make photocopies of it, take pictures of it, you know, a picture of myself holding it with today's newspaper, all those things. Number three, tell absolutely no one. Minus my husband. I legally cannot turn out like that California woman. I'm gonna have to tell my husband. I don't want him running away with all of it. Also, he can double check, he can triple check that I actually won. I always get to have a second set of eyes. Beyond my husband, silence to everyone. Just my continued flat daily affectation. Step four is lawyer up, like you said. You want a lawyer to be able to help you with claiming the prize, with public disclosure, anonymity laws, trust, other legal entities, marital property rules, lump sum versus annuity decisions, federal state taxes, estate planning, all those types of things. The most important goal to me, step number five, is be as anonymous as legally possible. Have you ever seen there's this guy? He's my true hero. He's a Jamaican man who won the Jamaican lottery, and he ri he went to accept it, accept his lottery. He knew that they would like be taking pictures and he's wearing a scream on the.

Angela 43:51

Oh no, I thought you were gonna say there's a guy who did that, and then which I guess this kind of like would have nothing to do with what you were uh talking about, but there was a guy who went. To go claim it, or like he they had him do a news story about winning the lottery. And in the news story, they were like, Hey, can you just like buy a ticket so we can get footage of you buying a ticket for our like be real? And the ticket was also a winner, and he won like another million dollars.

Daniel 44:15

Oh wow, that's amazing. Yeah, no, not that guy. What I'm talking about is this guy he won, and in order to conceal his identity, he marched his way down to the press event and he just put on a scream mask and he just accepted the award with the ghost face mask on. My true hero. That man understood the assignment, and I checked my state. Whatever state I may currently reside in, you all don't know. I can also be anonymous when I win. So I am sitting pretty for when I win.

Angela 44:40

Your 14-point plan, which the additional point is uh maintain podcast anonymity.

Daniel 44:48

Exactly.

Angela 44:48

Like just in preparation.

Daniel 44:50

Step number six is assemble the anti-curse team. So on top of the aforementioned lawyer, that's also a CPA to deal with taxes and just generally dealing with your money, a fee-only fiduciary, financial planner, or registered investment advisor to help you grow your money, a security and privacy professional if the prize is large enough to warrant it. So really time to put the ghost in ghost face. Like I am disappearing, the world will not know who I am. I physically, digitally, everywhere, fix all those things. Also, an estate planning specialist in case I literally put the ghost in ghost face and die. I want my money to go to whoever I want without minimal taxes, the most efficient way to do it, trust, etc.

Angela 45:30

Who else you need on your team? You need somebody who is going to be an expert in curses who has perhaps had a podcast about curses.

Daniel 45:39

An official role, I see.

Angela 45:41

It can't, yes, an official role. And it can't be you. It needs to be somebody else. Otherwise, you just create an echo chamber. Like, what's the point? Of course. And I think that I think I saw that that the going rate, like honestly, this would be low ball. It's like a million dollars a year for that kind of a role.

Daniel 45:58

After taxes. I thought you were just saying I thought nothing was worth a million dollars, Angela.

Angela 46:04

I said I am I changed my statement to a couple million dollars.

SPEAKER_03 46:09

Oh, okay, okay. So you you fit right through the loophole. I see.

Angela 46:12

Yeah. And that is not including the best friend tax. That's not including the best friend tax. I just want to make that clear.

Daniel 46:19

Okay. Next step. You brought me to step number eight before you spend a single dollar. Take care of taxes. How many people did we see back then that that lost money to taxes?

SPEAKER_00 46:28

Oh, I thought you were gonna say you were gonna give me some money. Fuck, it's just taxes.

Daniel 46:35

So take care of taxes. That money does not exist. It's already the government's money. Step number nine is institute a cooling off period. I'm just gonna like chill for a little bit. Maybe one impulse buy, but I'm just gonna chill. I'm not gonna make any decisions for a while. Obviously, my judgment will be clouded. After that, I will build the never be poor again fund. That's essentially I will imagine a life. That's everything I could imagine doing, how much spending that would be in a year, add on some for safety, and then I will take that and then there's a lot more math to it, but you basically multiply that by 25 and invest that amount of money. You can then just live off the investment return off that. So I have my financial planner do that, that money set aside, that money is never touched for anything other than to just be like, hey, guess what? I'm always gonna have money income coming to me. And I will never, ever, ever run out of all this money, no matter how stupid the decisions I make in my next two steps are, which are step number 11, let my inner daddy war bucks fly free and just give money to whomever I want. I'll give money and buy houses for whomever. I mean, once once I'm like guaranteed to always have as much money as I could rationally imagine spending in a modest, normal life in a year, it's like, why would I not just give money to everyone? So, yeah, I want to straight up be Oprah. Just you get a house, you get a car, you get whatever. That would be fun. It would be very structured, though. It'd be like, I'm gonna tell people, here's what you're getting, you're getting some money. If you don't know how to live your life on this, what are you doing? So I would I'd be very worried about people like all of a sudden there being like a privately operated bank of Daniel. Let's call it the bank of ghost face to be safe. No one even knows Daniel's name. But like, I don't want to be a bank, I just want to be like, hey, everyone take some money, make smart choices with it. You can now live a blessed life with me. After that is step number 12, establish the fun money fund. This is where literally I just get to live all my fantasies, do whatever I want. Any leftover money I can spend, do whatever I want.

Angela 48:23

What is one thing that is outrageous but realistic that you think you would do?

Daniel 48:29

I don't really think I would. I'd buy a really nice house. I don't know. I don't think I'd buy that much. I do think my one ridiculous thing I would do, and this is my step 13, because I needed a 13th step. Because really 12th was just do anything I want. What else is beyond that? But step 13 to me is travel the world, and that's what I would do. I would travel the world. I'd probably just fly business class everywhere I wanted. You know, I just wouldn't think of expense. I I wouldn't necessarily do outrageous things. I just would do everything I wanted to do without worrying about it.

Angela 48:57

Yeah, like I feel like I would pick, because I also, I mean, we both are travel, we travel a lot, so I think we both would like I'm I would dedicate a certain period of time to like doing an around the world trip and doing it really bougie-ish. And then like I don't know, actually, because maybe once you get like if you have if you've done everything, then what's left and that might be kind of an empty feeling when you get back.

Daniel 49:16

You do have to fight that hedonic adaptation. You maybe rough it a couple times.

Angela 49:21

Damn. But um, I feel like I would consider, I would like give myself an amount of like you can have XYZ amount of residences, and it has to make some kind of sense, but like my like obnoxious splurge would be like a Pieter in Paris. I don't need it to be like a mansion or whatever, but I would like to have a place that's nice and comfortable to then be able to be like, oh, I'd like to go to Paris. Like I just wanna I would basically just become Eina Garden, I think.

Daniel 49:53

I mean, that's what everyone wants in life. Live the Eina Garden life.

Angela 49:56

Yeah.

Daniel 49:57

And the the key to doing that is the lottery, right?

Angela 49:59

I mean she didn't win the lottery, but yeah, the key to doing that is sure, win the lottery. I'm like, wait, can I think of other ways to do this that maybe have less like better than one in a trillion odds?

Daniel 50:13

Well, I mean, there's like work hard your whole life, save invest smartly. I know, right?

Angela 50:18

No, I'm just kidding. That's fine. I like that. I can do that.

Daniel 50:20

So now I guess sort of stepping back to looking at this whole lottery curse, I mean, where do where do you see we stand? I mean, is it cursed? Is it cursed-ish? Whoa, how what are you thinking?

Angela 50:31

I think that it is the curse of like I always land here of the curse of just being a human where like you have a brain inside your head that behaves in such a way and you don't have a whole ton of control over it, and that brain often would take a situation like this and go fucking haywire. And so that is the curse, is like we are not equipped for that, and it would take even if you and I followed our plans to a T, like something would be not what we expected, or something would go awry, or something would become a problem. Like, even like I said, Oh, I would love to go on a round-the-world trip, and then I immediately I'm like, but then I would run out of places that I've never been, and like, what is would that make me sad? So I think that it is like more of like a curse of like just the way that we're wired would work. It would like damn you in this situation. There's really no way around it, but I don't think it's like a supernatural curse.

Daniel 51:31

Yeah. Yeah, I mean fabulous wealth is a tool. It can be a tool to do things well in your life, it can be a tool to amplify bad things in your life. Yeah. I think really it yeah, it comes down to, like you said, there's this natural thing. Some humans are gonna go through this experience of sudden fabulous wealth. Some are gonna do well with it, some will not do well for various reasons. Um reasons that psychologists have looked at, reasons that make sense based on culture and society, and just how we interact with other people, um, how our brains work, how finances work, and all that. Um, but then also there's that statistical element that is like, yeah, we're making up this curse. Of course, it's a dangerous fraught scenario, potentially, to have this attention on you, to have focus on you, to have to all of a sudden steer this financial tool that you were never taught how to wield. And so that makes sense that it could become thought of as curse. And then there's this other side where it's like, if I won the lottery, I would still be very worried about some of these really real machinations of culture of society, and I would feel I feel like I need a plan to avoid that curse. So I think that kind of makes it real. Like, that's as real as any curse will ever be, is something that I actually say I would take certain steps to avoid. Whether it's a a supernatural curse or something that's very real and worth avoiding.

Angela 52:53

That's fair.

Daniel 52:54

I think that really is what makes it cursed-ish.

Angela 52:56

Okay. And we'll meet you in the middle at Cursed Ish.

Daniel 52:59

Maybe cursed, maybe not.

Angela 53:01

We'll see you next week.

Daniel 53:10

Cursedish is an ish media production. It explores stories of alleged curses, historical mysteries, and supernatural claims. While we do investigate the history and the evidence behind these stories, ultimately you should decide for yourself what to believe. If you have questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share, send us a hex at uh oh at cursedish.com. That's uh oh h all one word at cursedish all one word.com