Powerball Winner Kept Mum -- Courant.com

For two weeks, no one knew who bought the winning $15 million Powerball ticket at a convenience store in Ashford earlier this month.

[Dave f]

courant is finally placing good stories on page one after working 30 years in newspapers composing rooms its nice to see this happening again........

[bonzo]

country bumpkin does good

[mike the tax payer]

Dave f wrote:

courant is finally placing good stories on page one after working 30 years in newspapers composing rooms its nice to see this happening again........

to bad that, between yesterday afternoon when this story first appeared on the site and this morning after its presumably gone to print, they couldn't fix the obvious typos.

[Far Ted]

for $4.9 million he can buy Ashford.

[Blame the Parents]

Glad to see he denied the son's request for a flat screen TV. Make him work for it. Good for you! Congrats

[Jack]

Good luck, you deserve it. Great judgement calls.

[Sue]

OK help me with this... it was a $15 million prize jackpot, he took the lump sum of 7,035,647.28, and THEN AFTER taxes he got to take home $4.9 million. What happened to the other $7 million? The state and feds really do make out well with these lotteries, between the sales and the taxes on the prizes. Anyway, my sincere congratulations to the winner, enjoy and have the time of your life!

[CONNECTICUT]

Enjoy and invest it wisely!!!

[zmann2007]

It went from 15 million to 4.9 million? Wow!! I think law should be changed on that?? Why does the GOVT have to keep 50% of lottery winnings for?? And for Pete's sake get your kid the Flat screen TV!! You can afford to get it now!!

[Benjamin]

Sue wrote:

OK help me with this... it was a $15 million prize jackpot, he took the lump sum of 7,035,647.28, and THEN AFTER taxes he got to take home $4.9 million. What happened to the other $7 million? The state and feds really do make out well with these lotteries, between the sales and the taxes on the prizes. Anyway, my sincere congratulations to the winner, enjoy and have the time of your life!

It's only a $15M prize if you take it in installments spread out over many years. If you want the lump sum payment, the $15M is only worth $7.03564728M before taxes, divorce Attorneys, ransom payments and all those wonderful little things that seem to crop up when people appear on the tube bragging about their newfound wealth.

[Uncle John]

Uncle John!!!! Hi!! It's me, your nephew Billy Bob!!! Can I stop over this weekend??? I need to talk to you about somethin'!!!!

[Never Understood]

Benjamin wrote:

<quoted text>It's only a $15M prize if you take it in installments spread out over many years. If you want the lump sum payment, the $15M is only worth $7.03564728M before taxes, divorce Attorneys, ransom payments and all those wonderful little things that seem to crop up when people appear on the tube bragging about their newfound wealth.

Never understood why people took their winnings in lump sum. You get screwed and you don't even get kissed!!! Set up a trust with survivorship and have lotto pay the trust in yearly payments. You get more $$$ and more people can benefit from it. Or you can be a Stu Pidasso and take it in lump sum, piss it away and come up broke!!!! Yea, that's the American Dream!!!!!!

[jackass]

you just won $5 million and you won't buy your son a television???? christ, i would've asked for a car, you should be proud to have a son that only asks for that. you don't deserve the money if you refuse to spend it on your own child

[Haaartford]

It's about time someone from Connecticut wins Powerball! Usually it's someone from the midwest. Good luck, sir!

[At First]

jackass wrote:

you just won $5 million and you won't buy your son a television???? christ, i would've asked for a car, you should be proud to have a son that only asks for that. you don't deserve the money if you refuse to spend it on your own child

At first I thought your name post was refering to the lotto winner. But now that I read your comments, I realize that IS your name!!!!!

[sjm2]

Never Understood wrote:

<quoted text>
Never understood why people took their winnings in lump sum.... You get more $$$ and more people can benefit from it.

I would suggest that you take a finance course to understand why it is a better move to take the reduced lump sum up front and invest it to get MUCH more money during the 20 years of the annuity payout.

Let's assume that half of the cash is gone to taxes, so his total winnings is about 7.5 m whether he takes payments or a lump sum. He had a choice of taking the 7.5 m distributed over 20 years or 4.9 m cash now.

If you take the 4.9 mill and conservatively invest it at 5 percent over 20 years, compounded monthly, you'll have about 13.3 million - almost DOUBLE the 7.5 million you'd get from the lottery over 20 years.

At 7 percent, the total jumps up to just under 20 mil.

That's why.

[A Reader]

Sue wrote:

OK help me with this... it was a $15 million prize jackpot, he took the lump sum of 7,035,647.28, and THEN AFTER taxes he got to take home $4.9 million. What happened to the other $7 million? The state and feds really do make out well with these lotteries, between the sales and the taxes on the prizes.

The available prize pool to fund a graduated prize payment (30 payments over 29 years) was $7,035,647.

The Lottery uses that $7 million amount to secure a bond that (over 29 years) will mature in value to $15,000,000.

In selecting the annuity option, the winner would have gotten 30 graduated payments over 29 years, at the end of those payments, the payments (pre-tax) would have added up to $15,000,000. Annually, taxes would have been removed from each payment, at whatever the current state and federal tax rates would be during that year.

By choosing the one-time cash lump sum, the winner received the total value of the prize pool,$7,035,647. From that amount, taxes were removed from that $7 million value.

[Mary]

I dunno, Never Understood, spend $1, make $4.9 million, even if it's alot less than the $15 mil -- I think that's the deal of the century. Who cares what the state takes? You're still $5 million richer.

[transplant from CT]

Never understood,

you take the lump sum because the annuity (the aforementioned $15 million)is what he would have gotten had the multi-state lottery commission invested the money. A Reader explains it rather well. By taking the lump sum, he can then invest the remaining money ($5 million after taxes). If he is good at investing (or hires somebody who is), then he could make off much better than taking the annuity.

[dan]

get a life