Not as much as you might think, as it turns out. For only the second time in history, a lottery jackpot \u2014 in this case,\u2026<\/b>
\nNot as much as you might think, as it turns out.
For only the second time in history, a lottery jackpot \u2014 in this case, the Mega Millions jackpot \u2014 is now over a billion dollars in payout. And while even a fraction of that money would be life-changing for just about anyone reading this article, that kind of cash doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that anything and everything is within reach.
For starters, no one is going to win a billion dollars all at once \u2014 that\u2019s not how lotteries work. Even if we exclude the very real possibility that the billion-dollar jackpot is split among multiple winners, a single winner isn\u2019t getting a billion. Far from it.
The winner \u2014 assuming that it\u2019s a single winner and that the jackpot isn\u2019t split \u2014 will have a choice to make. He or she can take the money either as an annuity \u2014 the advertised jackpot in annual payments of $40,000,000 over 25 years \u2014 or as a lump-sum payment of roughly half of the advertised total. The second option amounts to $565.6 million as of this writing, according to the Missouri Lottery .
The very first thing that\u2019s going to happen \u2014 regardless of which form of payout the winner selects \u2014 is that the so-called \u201ctax man\u201d is going to take their cut. So, if our hypothetical winner takes a lump-sump payment, he or she will wind up with about $400 million.
And while $400 million is a staggering amount of scratch, it\u2019s not a font of unlimited wealth.
If the winner wanted to buy the most expensive home in America, for example, they\u2019d have to shell out approximately $250 million for the Bel Air, California, property \u2014 according to Business Insider \u2014 taking 62.5 percent of their nest egg with it. The property taxes, maintenance costs, and utility bills would be extravagant, and the winner would be broke again in approximately ten years.
Let\u2019s not even get started on luxury yachts. According to Greek lifestyle magazine Luxehabit, the most expensive yachts top out at about $1.1 billion \u2014 out of reach even if the winner took the whole advertised jackpot, and didn\u2019t lose out on taxes. A more \u201cmodest\u201d yacht would set the winner back by about $200 million, but they would, again, have to fuel it, harbor it, and crew it.
The bottom line is that wealth is all relative. A $400 million check would launch the winner into stratospheric net worth, but they would still be a pauper compared to the world\u2019s richest people.<\/p>\n

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