The idea of winning a lottery seems appealing to many as it promises a carefree ticket to a better life. No more debts, no need to worry about bills or housing, no need to work at a job you don’t like. It’s a freedom that only a few can offer themselves.

But, geez, doesn’t it come with a whole lot of other baggage that can often lead to much worse situations than financial worries. Marriages fail, friends leave, and parents turn their back on their children. Many winners end up in more financial troubles than they’ve had before, sometimes even going bankrupt. In some cases, winning a lottery can also become a life-threatening ordeal.

A redditor that goes by @throwawaylucx has recently experienced the ecstasy of winning a big sum of money. Now, it seems, reality is knocking on her door, and she’s turning to the AITA community for some guidance.

Imagine winning a lottery jackpot after years of financial hardship—what a dream come true!

Image credits: Erik Mclean (not the actual photo)

But it all can quickly turn sour when someone else has an eye on your winnings, like it happened to this woman

Image credits: Lindsey Weber (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Tyler Nix (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Mufid Majnun (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Jeremy Beadle (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Ethan Sykes (not the actual photo)

Image credits: throwawaylucx

Balancing one’s newfound wealth and relationships can be a struggle

Image credits: Nate Johnston (not the actual photo)

What’s great is that this woman is already trying to be smart about the whole situation. She did not immediately announce her win to everybody and instead decided to carefully plan her next steps so that the money may serve her and her family well. So, it’s understandable that for her, the plan of sharing the money with her husband’s best friend sounds quite impractical. Now, just like many other lottery winners, this woman now has to balance her relationships while trying to make the best of her luck.

On one hand, she wants to maintain a good relationship with a person she’s been married to for more than a decade and respect his wishes. It’s a responsibility they are taking on together and listening to each other is important. And, at first glance, his idea might seem alright – helping out a friend, covering up where the money is coming from, having someone to share the burden. However, as many other redditors pointed out, the couple would be putting themselves in an awful legal situation.

Majority of redditors agreed that the woman was not being unfair by insisting they officially keep the winnings to themselves. Many advised the woman to get a lawyer that could provide some valuable legal counsel on what to do next. Others insisted that the woman should keep the winnings legally just to herself and for sure keep the money out of her husband’s business. Setting up a trust would also be an important step in order to avoid people finding out her name through announcements.

Privacy is, in fact, the thing that worries the lottery winner the most. “I’m not worried about giving too much away. Just worried about people finding out,” she answered to one of the commentators that was worried about her giving away a huge chunk of her winnings. She emphasizes that she understands where her husband is coming from about sharing the fortune, as their families were trying to “make it together.” She simply doesn’t want the friend’s family to spill the beans to everyone.

Lotteries are an old form of entertainment that has flourished in recent decades

Image credits: Emiliano Vittoriosi (not the actual photo)

In general, the love for lotteries is quite widespread. According to historian Jonathan D. Cohen, who published his book “For a Dollar and a Dream: State Lotteries in Modern America” just last year, people spend a lot of money on those square pieces of paper. “Americans spend more on lottery tickets every year than on cigarettes, coffee, or smartphones,” writes Cohen, “and they spend more on lottery tickets annually than on video streaming services, concert tickets, books, and movie tickets combined.”

While a lottery might seem like a purely capitalist invention made to rack private companies millions of dollars, they actually are quite an old form of entertainment. As Karthryn Schulz notes in her article in The New Yorker analyzing Cohen’s book, they were common back in the Roman Empire. In fact, Caesar Augustus used lottery money to fund the repairs of Rome. Similarly, the Han dynasty used money collected through lotteries to subsidize the building of The Great Wall of China.

The lotto type of lottery, where one has to guess an exact number sequence to win, is based on a betting game that originated from seventeenth century Genoa. It revolutionized the modern-day lottery as it made it possible for jackpots to grow bigger and bigger in size. You see, if you print a million tickets and you make one of them the lucky one, someone will win it sooner or later. But lotto could go on and on, compounding one week’s jackpot with the next, till the prize grows enormous in size. And that, of course, starts the “virtuous” lottery cycle: the bigger the possible winnings—the more people buy tickets, the more people buy tickets—the bigger the possible winnings. The sales of lotto tickets soars.

Before the lotto concept was introduced in late twentieth century, it was rare for the big prize to exceed one million dollars. Nowadays, you can literally win a billion dollars by guessing the numbers correctly. And with the responsibility that comes with such sums, it’s no surprise that any reasonable winner would do their best to try and hide their name from the public.

The lottery winner revealed more details about her family’s financial situation and relationship with “Tim” in the comments

The community wholeheartedly supported her and encouraged her to get professionals involved as soon as possible

The woman later followed up with an update and her takeaways on what she should do next

Image credits: throwawaylucx

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