NEW POLL: Have any of you met a lottery winner?Prev TopicNext Topic

• rundown99

  

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  May 17, 2007, 12:57 pm

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  If so, did you talk to him/her?  What are their lives like?  I have watched television interviews of lottery winners and became curious about their lives for years.  What are your thoughts on this? It would be interesting to hear about the effects of lottery fame from the perspectives of various lottery winners. 

  Smart lottery winners form trust to claim their winnings.  They send an attorney to the lottery headquarters to claim the prize in trust, so that ONLY the name of the trust is revealed.  And they tell NO ONE, especially relatives.

  If you ever win a lottery and you are single, the only person you should ever marry is someone who was truly in love with you BEFORE you won the jackpot!

  People can talk about strategies and gimmicks all they want, but unless your ticket actually matches at least 5 of those 6 balls, you are just another person who tried to win a game yet ultimately failed.
• pacattack05

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  May 17, 2007, 1:24 pm

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  I have, but she didn't win millions, just about 100,000 or so. She works at the liquor store where I shop. She and her husband still work.

  The wife of a limo driver I used to work for also won a few hundred thousand, but I think that they've got only one more installment left.

  I do wish to meet a millionaire winner so I can give them a sob story and get a nice hand out...LOL
• lottolaughs

  

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  May 17, 2007, 1:24 pm

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  You didn't mention whether you meant a "millions and up" lottery winner but I did meet one man who won CA. Fantasy Five at the store I buy my tickets from. He used to buy tickets like crazy,everytime I'd go there,he'd be standing at the machine with all his playslips. Kind of sad but come to find out that last year he died from heat exhaustion during our heatwave last summer. The store clerk told me he and his roomate were too cheap to turn on the air conditioner and they both perished. It was in the paper so I know it was true.
• Coin Toss

  

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  May 17, 2007, 3:37 pm

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  Our neigbor in Germany won the Hessen lotto. He was the weatherman for the local TV station and kept on being the weatherman.

  When I worked in Vegas we had a player who had won the jackpot in the California lottery.

  She didn't say how much she had won, but her credit rating at the cage was, "Give her whatever she asks for".

  She told us she took a certain amount of it and came to Vegas to 'have fun rolling some dice and betting on the NBA for a week and get it out of my system."

  She wasn't a high roller on the dice tables, $5 - $25 bettor, and was putting up $110 to $1100 on the basketball games.

  She hung out for just about a week and left.

  I'd have to say she was one of the smart ones.
  

  Those who run the lotteries love it when players look for consistency in something that's designed not to have any. So many systems, so many theories, so few jackpot winners. 

  

  There is one and only one 'proven' system, and that is to book the action. No matter the game, let the players pick their own losers.
• LOTTOMIKE

  

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  May 17, 2007, 6:03 pm

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  my uncle won 25,000 dollars in the tennessee millionaire drawing a couple years back.his name was even featured on lottery post.he died of cancer here a few months back.

  
• guesser

  

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  May 17, 2007, 10:08 pm

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  Two of them.

  One I had to talk some sense into.
• justxploring

  

  Wandering Aimlessly
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  May 17, 2007, 10:20 pm

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  The first winner I met was in the early 70s.   A family had won the big jackpot which was $50,000.  They moved out of the projects and bought a home in the burbs. I really don't know what happened later on regarding finances.

  The second winner was a couple I knew through a friend won over a million dollars (also in MA) and kept their jobs.  He was a factory worker to the best of my knowledge.  They renovated their home and used some of the money to send their children to college.  Again, this was a while ago, in the mid-80s.

  3 years ago I had a customer who was complaining that she "only" got 5 numbers in MM and ended up with $250,000.   I guess I was supposed to feel sorry for her! 

  I worked with a woman about 15 years ago who went to Vegas and hit the slots for just under 1/2 a million (before taxes) She bought a condo and invested the rest. 

  I've never met any multi-million dollar winners. 

   

   

   
• emilyg

  

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  May 17, 2007, 10:28 pm

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  Yes - two.  ga. Fantasy Five.

   

  One is a nice gentleman who took early retirement.  the other is a cook at nursing home - paying for her boys college.

  love to nibble those micey feet.

   

                               
• CARBOB

  

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  May 18, 2007, 7:19 am

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  Yes,  1, Playing Lo-Ball in a Ca Card Parlor. He seem to have his act togather. He took annual payments +$400,000. The only money he spent out of the first check was to pay-off his home. He and his wife were planning on working for 5 years and banking those checks, then retire. Guessing his age, I would say,early thirties. 
• CARBOB

  

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  May 18, 2007, 8:00 am

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  In response to CARBOB

  Quote: Originally posted by CARBOB on May 18, 2007

  Yes,  1, Playing Lo-Ball in a Ca Card Parlor. He seem to have his act togather. He took annual payments +$400,000. The only money he spent out of the first check was to pay-off his home. He and his wife were planning on working for 5 years and banking those checks, then retire. Guessing his age, I would say,early thirties. 

  I should have added, that amount was after withholding taxes!!
• RJOh

  

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  May 18, 2007, 8:20 am

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  Most people have never met a lottery jackpot winner because there just aren't that many of them.  One winner generates a hundred stories so it just seems like we're hearing about them all the time.  Years ago when I matched 5/6 in the Ohio Super Lotto for $1500, the clerk who had worked in that store for over 5 years said I was the first person in her experience to win that much lottery money.  Last month when I match 4+0 in MegaMillions for $150 at another store, the clerk said that was the biggest win she had seen since she started working there three months earlier.  I doubt if I've ever bought a ticket in a store that had a lottery jackpot winner let alone met one.  Lets face it, there aren't that many people winning big money playing the lotteries.   

   * you don't need to buy every combination, just the winning ones * 

         
  
• weshar75

  

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  May 18, 2007, 9:12 am

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  My uncle Jim about 15 years ago won 5 of 6 on Oregon Megabucks for $3500.  My brother in law worked with someone who bought a $5.4 million Megabucks winner in Willamina, Oregon.  He was a mill worker until he won and he left the mill to live off the annual payments he received from the lottery.-weshar75
• lottolaughs

  

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  May 18, 2007, 9:38 am

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  In response to RJOh

  Quote: Originally posted by RJOh on May 18, 2007

  Most people have never met a lottery jackpot winner because there just aren't that many of them.  One winner generates a hundred stories so it just seems like we're hearing about them all the time.  Years ago when I matched 5/6 in the Ohio Super Lotto for $1500, the clerk who had worked in that store for over 5 years said I was the first person in her experience to win that much lottery money.  Last month when I match 4+0 in MegaMillions for $150 at another store, the clerk said that was the biggest win she had seen since she started working there three months earlier.  I doubt if I've ever bought a ticket in a store that had a lottery jackpot winner let alone met one.  Lets face it, there aren't that many people winning big money playing the lotteries.   

  I find this interesting that there have been so few winners where you frequent. The mom and pop store I used to work in had 4/5 winners frequently for Pick 5/Pick 6 and then as soon as I quit someone won the SuperLotto Jackpot. There is another store here,Lichine's Deli and Liquor where there have been 3 Jackpot winners since 2000. It's a little out of the way but I always try to buy my tickets there.

  I'd say you're due for a big winner,RJOH!  Are you buying tickets somewhere where there's not a lot of heavy traffic? I know here in CA. every time you turn around the jackpots are being won in the Los Angeles area down south where,of course,it's more heavily populated. More people,more tickets,more winners.
• justxploring

  

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  May 18, 2007, 10:48 am

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  RJOh, I agree with you that there aren't very many big winners, but I "know" of many people who won prizes of $5,000 and $10,000, even the Fant 5 for over $100,000.  I put the word "know" in quotes since I really don't know them at all.  However, I do know the clerks at Publix where the tickets were bought. 

  Maybe a lot of members here have dozens of friends, but I don't.  So if I could write that I knew several big winners and tell you how it affected them, it wouldn't make much sense, unless the odds were less than 1 in 100.   I suppose if you include all the people I've known for years including relatives, neighbors co-workers and personal friends they would add up to over 1,000. Still the odds of personally knowing someone who won a huge jackpot would then be only 1 in 1,000.  So as frustrating as the Lottery is, and as improbable as one of us becoming a millionaire might sound, maybe the outlook isn't quite as gloomy as you say.  (I can dream, can't I?)
• Three2001

  

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  May 18, 2007, 12:17 pm

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  If I've never met one, does that mean that they don't really exist?  Hmmm...

  Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.