The Lottery – part 2
Tags: Lottery, Shirley Jackson, Short Story
The Lottery – part 1
Tags: Shirley Jackson, Short Story The Lottery
Another 2-time lottery winner
Wanda Sargent has done twice what most people have never done once.
Last year she won $66,000 in the Nebrask Pick 5. When that happened, her husband tried to get her to spend part of the money to get him a workshop build in their back yard.
Her response was, “If I win the lottery again, then you can have your workshop.” Looks like that is going to happen, since Sargent won her second lottery prize recenly – another $62,000.
Sargent has been spending $12 per week for the last 2 years, and it looks like her investment has paid off in a big way. Not exactly “I will never have to work again” money, but nice sums nonetheless.
And her husband is drawing up plans for that new workshop.
Lottery-winning couple gets some good advice
Jeff and Sandy Carl were recently overjoyed to win the SuperLotte Plus jackpot of $26 million. So, did they get drunk, buy some cars and houses and visit all 7 continents? No, they are smarter than that.
The winning couple told a newspaper reporter that their plan is to hire an accountant and an attorney to help them manage their money. They want to fund their son’s college education first, then give some money to charity, and after that they will do some traveling and perhaps invest in some vacation homes.
One advisor told them the first thing is, “Go slow and think. Then, think again.”
They were also told that they might want to disconnect their home phone, since they could start hearing from long-lost relatives who suddenly have an interest in rekindling the family relationship.
The Carls might benefit from the information that was distributed from a study not long ago. The study followed two groups of people: lottery winners, and amputees. Initially that sounds like a very different comparison. However, the study showed that one year after winning the lottery, and one year after losing a limb, most of the people in each group are no more or less happy than they were before. Most of the people in both groups had learned to adapt to their new situation, and then returned to their previous level of happiness.
The lesson? Money really DOESN’T buy happiness. But most people would like to try anyway.
110 players guess the same winning numbers
Guessing the correct 5 out of 6 numbers in a lotto game carries odds of about 1 in 3 million. So when 110 players from different states turned in those winning 2nd-place tickets, lottery officials immediately suspected that someone, somehow, was cheating the game. But they were all legitimate.
Finally they figured it out. Those players had all played the numbers that showed up on a fortune cookie. All of those fortune cookies came from the same manufacturer: Wonton Food in Long Island, New York.
Depending on how much they initially bet, each of those 110 people won between $100,000 and $500,000. This resulted in an additional unexpected payout of $19 million from the lottery. They keep an extra $25 million in reserve for unusual situations such as this.
It’s nice to see the house get beat once in a while.