The American Dream has changed. Your parents and grandparents believed the American Dream was becoming successful and comfortable through a lifetime of hard work and savings. The new version of the American Dream has become winning the lottery, where anyone can go from rags to riches instantly and without any qualifications other than buying a lottery ticket. And 2018 is starting the year off with a very odd set of circumstances: the Powerball lottery jackpot has risen to a whopping $440 million, and the Mega Millions lottery jackpot has risen to $343 million.

Winning either lottery would easily make for the best New Year’s gift anyone could imagine. The massive Powerball drawing will be Wednesday night, and the “smaller” Mega Millions drawing will be on Tuesday night.

It may seem odd that lotteries are so enthralling to the public due to how incredibly low the odds are against winning. Still, the combined winnings of $743 million between the two is a very rare instance in the world of lotteries. And the public is constantly reminded by politicians and the media that it’s just too hard to get rich the old-fashioned way with hard work and years of saving and planning.

The Mega Millions jackpot of $343 million is the annuity value, but the cash lump sum payout is $215 million. The Powerball drawing’s annuity value of $440 million has a lump sum cash payment option of $278.3 million. It doesn’t matter which lottery is won, and it doesn’t matter which payout option the winners choose. This is enough money to create multi-generational empire wealth.

Unfortunately, there is a dark side to winning the lottery. Many winners somehow end up broke, and some of those boom-bust winners go broke in just a few years. It is for this reason that 24/7 Wall St. has created a self-help guide for lottery winners. This is a list of 12 things you should not do if you ever win the lottery.

It may seem impossible to blow through $100 million, $200 million or even $300 million. Guess again. Those winners who do not make immediate plans and set protections in place are on the path of going broke. Who wants to go from rags to riches, only to go back to rags or mediocrity? The adage to consider here is that no one should ever have to get rich twice.

While the things not to do pertains first to lottery winners, they can easily be applied to anyone who comes into fast and unexpected wealth. That could be from an unexpected inheritance, the sale of a business, a legal judgment, or even becoming a stock-options millionaire.

There are literally endless and limitless opportunities for what lottery winners can buy. There are numerous ways to overcommit. And there are many tricks and crooks that are out there just waiting to pry away money from those who take no precautions and set up safeguards to protect their newfound wealth.

The pitfalls coming the way of lottery winners have to be avoided at all costs. Sadly, some of those pitfalls may come directly from friends and family. Other pitfalls may come from acquaintances, and others from those who intend to do harm. It may sound like a joke, but it is no joke at all that your life may depend on taking quick action and having a plan in place if you win the lottery.

Most lottery winners choose to take the cash lump sum option. This is instant wealth, rather than waiting for a few million each year for the annuity payout. It turns out that vast and instant wealth is just more enticing than taking a multi-million paycheck each year.

Lottery winners need to assume that their family relationships and friendships will be tested immediately and over time after winning the lottery. Bragging about getting filthy rich could even get you killed. Getting a financial plan and tax advice have to be followed with setting up a realistic a budget.

Again, it’s rather easy these days to quickly blow through $100 million, $200 million or even $500 million in a short time. Just add up the costs of buying mega-mansions, yachts, private jets, luxury cars, lavish vacations, art and jewelry. Then think about private islands, taking everyone you know on a luxury cruise and endless other temptations. Buying and paying for these is expensive enough, but now think about insurance, personnel costs, security, and taxes on all these belongings.

Now listen closely here if any of these points about being responsible and setting up a plan to protect yourself from the temptations after becoming filthy rich sound silly. If that is so, then you are already at severe risk of going broke if you ever suddenly become filthy rich.

It’s hard enough to become wealthy. And it’s even harder to become filthy rich. Keeping all that newfound wealth is harder still. Again, you should only have to become rich once.

Here are the 12 things not to do if you win the lottery.

1. Do not forget to sign that winning ticket and to report it immediately.

It may seem ridiculous that some people might fail to sign a winning lottery ticket. And what a winner would forget to report the winning ticket to the state? It has happened. Now imagine if you have the winning ticket and it is stolen. Or think about if it burns up in a house fire. Endless millions of lottery dollars have gone unclaimed. Some people somehow manage to not report to the state that they won.

Now imagine how you would feel if you lost a winning lottery ticket. Or what about if someone else takes your winning ticket and then shows up to collect the prize? Fighting over a winning lottery ticket is no simple task, and disputes have arisen over who was the real owner of winning lottery tickets.

In more ways than not, a winning lottery ticket is like the last form of bearer bonds. Whoever shows up with the right paper gets paid. You have to sign and secure that ticket, and you then have to report to the state.

2. Do not brag about winning the lottery to anyone.

Who upon winning tens or hundreds of millions of dollars wouldn’t want to brag to everyone they know about it? How could you not? Do not dare do this! Keep quiet for as you can. Your friends or family members cannot be trusted to keep your secret a secret.

Telling everyone you know before you collect your winnings can put you in danger. That is danger in more ways than just one. Everyone who has ever done anything for you now may come with their hands out asking for something. You may even become a target. You may have heard of kidnap and ransom insurance before.

It is sad to report that some lottery winners became murder victims, and for far less than the massive empire-building jackpots. If you can manage it, and if your state allows it, try to remain anonymous for as long as possible. How you became vastly wealthy will be found out in time anyway. Do not rush out and hurry that process along and jeopardize yourself.

3. Do not decide to take the lump sum cash option without considering the big picture.

Whether it is $50 million, $200 million or $500 million, most people elect to receive a lump sum today rather than getting money sent out over a lifetime. A figure that has been cited in the media is that around 70% of lottery winners end up broke again. Some manage to go broke within a few years. Let’s say that you can choose to get over $200 million in a lump sum payment; do you know for sure without consideration that is a better choice than receiving a payout of $375 million slowly over the course of a lifetime?

Again most people choose the lump sum rather than taking the annuity payment. After all, it is instant empire-making money.

Go see a reputable and visible tax professional and a reputable investment advisor at a top money management firm with a widely recognized company name and a long corporate history. This theme of “reputable and visible” will echo throughout. Do this before you automatically make the decision about a lump sum or annuity option.

4. Do not start thinking that you are now the smartest person about finance.

Winning millions of dollars instantly does not make you any smarter about money than you were right before you found out you hit it rich. In fact, it might prove to make you realize that you knew very little about money. Lottery winners, and those who come into unexpected vast sums of cash, need to immediately get outside financial advice. If you are living paycheck to paycheck before the lottery, does it seem logical that you suddenly know the best things to invest in? How likely is it that you will immediately know the best tax and asset protection strategies?

There are many ways to invest and to protect that new fortune. Strategies of the extremely wealthy often go way beyond just buying stocks and bonds and letting those investments ride. As far as who to use, or who not to use, chances are very high that your drinking buddy might not be the best choice as an advisor and expert.

Having a solid and respectable team of financial advisors and managers from reputable firms will act as your buffer to protect your assets now and in the future. Do you know how to protect your assets against all threats and know exactly how to protect your estate in case you die or become incapacitated? Here is a very real hint: If you answered yes, you probably did not bother playing the lottery.

5. Do not let your debt and existing obligations remain in place.

If you suddenly become filthy rich, get rid of your old financial obligations and debts immediately. If you feel like “I’m rich and don’t have to pay anymore,” you are already deep into the path of dooming yourself. Whether you take the lump sum or the annuity option, if you have a single penny of debt in the immediate future and distant future, then something is seriously wrong. For that matter, you should not have a single debt ever again. One lottery winner in California was reportedly strapped with debt from property purchases.

If you manage to go broke down the road and still have a mortgage, car payments, student loans, credit card debt and personal bills, all your friends and family members should get to spank or ridicule you every day for the rest of your life.

6. Do not go out and live the big life way too big.

Temptation to keep buying or accumulating can wipe you out. If you go from living a simple life to instantly having the wherewithal to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) per week, what do you think happens to your expectations in life ahead? Chances are high that you will want more of the same.

If you start gambling in Las Vegas and are not happy until you are gambling with hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) per play, you are dooming yourself. Now just wait until the real con men find you. Taking you and your favorite 500 people on a luxury cruise around the world can become very expensive, very fast. Having an entourage generally only works for people who keep making more and more money — and they usually end up broke for that cost.

7. Do not run out and buy everything for everyone, not even for yourself!

Everyone probably has a list of things they would love to own. Buying nice things is fun. It can even create a rush for some people. Imagine getting to buy whatever your imagination can think of. Now take a breath for a second.

Society and the endless commercials trick the public into thinking they need to own endless numbers of things. It’s just stuff! Do not go out and buy dozens of cars. Do not go buy multiple houses. Do not run out and keep buying things for friends and family members (nor for yourself). This will put you on a bad path if you do not avoid the impulse buying. Do you really want to be your friends and family personal welfare department?

If you start buying everything for everyone, chances are high that they might expect that to last forever. The other end of the story is that you do not have to be a cheapskate either. Still, after hearing a real-life personal story of one lucky winner buying more than 30 cars and multiple houses in three months, it is just crazy.

8. Do not think that budgets are just for the poor and middle class.

It may seem silly on the surface that you might need a budget and might need to consider limitations. The harsh reality is that creating and actually living on a budget are not just tasks for the poor and the middle class. The very wealthy, at least those who stay that way, know that even a vast sum of money can vaporize. Major lottery winners generally become wealthier in an instant than everyone they know combined. This also goes back to having advisors and being prudent, but at the end of the day you do still have a finite sum of money. Chances are very high that you will make some serious purchases and your lifestyle will be changed forever.

Without setting limits for yourself and for what you do with others is a recipe for disaster. Again, many lottery winners go broke. If they went broke in a very short time, what do you think the reflection about wishing for a proper budget would be? In short: Do not think you don’t need a budget!

9. Do not become the business backer for your friends and family.

If you knew little about money or finance yesterday, what makes you think you will understand venture capital or merchant banking now? It may sound powerful and enticing. Do not fall into this trap. One common theme that has come up with lottery winners who suddenly get vast sums of cash is that their friends and family start pitching them on endless business ideas. Sure, some will sound great and some will sound crazy. This could expose you to more than just a loss. You could end up with endless liabilities in some cases.

If someone has no knowledge of a particular business and does not know what it takes to actually run a business, will they do better because a lottery winner who lucked into vast wealth gave them money to start it? If your answer is yes, you seriously need to protect yourself (from yourself).

10. Do not think about giving your new fortune away immediately.

Many lottery winners and others who become filthy rich fall into the trap of thinking that they need to immediately share their newfound wealth with society. It may seem nice to give away vast amounts of cash to charity or to religious institutions. This might not be the case for everyone, but giving away an entire fortune or a large part of it to a charity or to religious institution needs to be given great consideration.

Imagine that you give away that fortunate and a serious crisis arises in your life or your family’s life. You simply gave away all financial means to change it. There are ways that you can be quite generous without doing the unthinkable. Rather than giving everything away now, the current charitable trend of the extremely wealthy is to plan for how to give the money away upon death. This allows you to divvy up what you want to give back to society and decide what you want to leave for heirs.

Should you be charitable? Absolutely! Should you give it all away? Absolutely not!

11. Do not get athlete or celebrity envy.

Many movie stars, entertainers and athletes live a life of luxury. Lottery money gives a winner the chance to live a life of luxury up with the lucky few. This privilege comes with pitfalls that can make them go broke. Keeping up with the Joneses is bad enough. Trying to keep up with celebrities is a recipe for disaster.

It may seem cool to own a 200-foot yacht, or perhaps to have an entourage or maybe a film crew following you around. It may seem cool owning castles in Europe. Owning an original Picasso painting sure sounds impressive. Having a big new private jet makes sense for a lot of people. Now go add up the price tags of these things, plus the cool cars and houses and the rest of it. You can go broke really quickly. Just ask actors and athletes who did this how they feel now.

Trying to dodge taxes might even sound appealing to misguided people. Before you do this, think about how many athletes and celebrities who have gone broke over tax dodging, and some even went to prison.

12. Do not think the laws or decency standards no longer apply.

There are some people who believe that the rich can do whatever they want without consequences. It is true that the wealthier you get, the more high-class trouble you can find. It is also true that the rich can afford better attorneys and a better legal defense than the rest of us. Still, living a reckless life without concerns about the law will not keep you from going to prison, or worse. A good sports coach will tell any star athlete upfront that chances are high they will have to be human for far longer than they are going to stars.

It is quite frequent that movies and television shows glamorize scoundrels. The reality in life is that fictional scoundrels would be scoundrels in real life. What good would it do you if you are incredibly wealthy and such a pariah that no one will associate with you? Remember, you don’t get to take any of your wealth with you.

Get Our Free Investment Newsletter

I have read, and agree to the Terms of Use

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.