Pay off any debt any people close to me might have. Go around the world to countries I have always wanted to go to: India, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Tunisia, Czech Republic, Peru, PNG, etc...Yah, a nice long extended vacation to many locations around the world! In fact, I would do extended trekking in Papua New Guinea and the Amazon too. With that money, I could hire a kick ass guide! But for the most part, I would travel the way I do now while I am poor. Maybe buy an island somewhere in south east Asia. I don't know what else, so much money. Just help my family and friends.
I would buy a few motorcycles. Donate a bit - probably 10%. The rest - I would invest, make it grow, and keep donating. Reading through this thread makes me want to travel a bit as well.
You won 30 million*, you take 30 million*. None of this smaller lump sum shit. Invest, ASAP, get my money working for me. Figure out what I need to sustain a comfortable standard of life indefinitely for myself plus up to 10 others. Figure out how much money it will take to attain this in various places. Get that amount of money from the interest on your capital, leave the capital alone. This'll take a few years, and Lotto stuff takes about 27 years to get to you, so patience is a must. If I decide to live like a king in a place where the people are doing shittily, then there'd need to be investing in local businesses, spreading internet access, and development of good training and production centers. I want self-sufficiency out of my land, and I want to spread self-sufficiency to others, especially if those others will then look on me favorably. Also, for toys: Transportation: Spoiler Honda Cruiser bike. Comfy, reliable, fuel efficient, and it should have enough space for me. I gotta say I like my Acura 3.5RL, I want to keep that with with slight modifications to tweak performance and top speed. Humvee/H1. A few, a Humvee to keep stock for patrolling land and hauling lightish loads, one to see if I can convert it to a diesel-electric vehicle. A Chinook or very similar Soviet design. "High Altitude? What's high altitude?" Merkava tank or Bradley AFV, for fleeing to the embassy in style! Weapons Spoiler M1 Garand, perfect condition. M14 in good condition or M21. FN-FAL (right arm of the free world, fuck yeah!) AK-47 or similar, preferably Soviet-built (Right arm of the Commies, fuck yeah!) G3 (-SG1 looks pretty nice) Nikonov AN-94, it's like an AK-74 but better SVD, made more accurate than any SVD has any right to be. Mosin-Nagant, preferably 91/30 SVT-40, for when the Garand gets boring I want a .22LR (sub?) machine gun, odds are it could be made as accurate as any other .22 for single shots, and .22LR's cheap. Pellet guns, for when you want to make tiny holes in things without dealing with explosives or significant noise. Well-made M1911 clone. Aand of course all the ammo to run them whenever I feel like it. Again, patience, patience. Home Improvement Spoiler Micro-hydroelectric power plant, a small fish hatchery, a huge section of forest, food garden, herb garden, pretty-but-still-useful "flower" garden for the entrance. Have gardens fed with water loaded with waste from the fish, and have some fish living in the garden areas, then send the "cleaned" water back to the fish farm/hatchery. Rammed-earth exterior fortification walls, so as to allow grasses and local plants to rise up their inward wall while still serving as an effective deterrent. Thorny bushes on the outside of the walls would be best. If I'm going to be living well in a shitty place, there's going to be some people who have some resentment, and might try to use force to avenge a perceived slight or just to get some money. It might be in my interest to be both generally liked and well guarded.
If I won the lotto, I'd look at it similarly to how I'd look at constructing a will (which, unfortunately, I've had to do, so this is a bit pre-planned). You can have your own memories, or you can do things to be remembered by others. In my opinion the greatest accomplishment in life is to leave a positive legacy -- that you have created something through your life that will increase the quality of life for generations of others. The first thing I would do is take 5 million to invest, and then build a school in an underprivileged area. Run initially off my capital (and the returns netted by the 5 mil), and then eventually through private donations, the school would serve Infants through high schoolers. The education would be free, though if their parents or grandparents made enough income they would be asked to make small donations for support. This is how it would be run, during the day. We would have job placement counselors, and per one of the terms of enrollment by the underprivileged parents, the parents, if unemployed, would have to use our services in an attempt to be gainfully employed. Anywhere. Just go to work. If any of our students, or their parents, were arrested and found guilty, that qualifies for expulsion. At night, the teachers would hold classes for the parents. Teach them the basics: how to interview, how to be a good employee (ex: don't start fights with your co-workers), how to help their children at home, how and why to get involved in the community. The school would be for the children and the parents, and the goal would be to transform the attitudes and abilities of the entire working class of a community. You would have to want to be there, but if you stuck with it, both the parents and their children would leave the school with the tools needed to not only bring themselves out of poverty, but to be successful, contributing members of our society. With whatever money was left over after getting the school through it's first few years, I would give to these guys (kiva.org). I make enough money to live a happy life, as does the rest of my family. Not overly wealthy, but not struggling. Sure, I'd like a whole bunch of guns, a nice car, and some better booze, but my Miller High Life tastes just fine, and my nieces and nephews will all go to school regardless. We'll still be happy, and if I won the lotto, I'd have the ability to make sure a lot of others were as well. [side note: the donation plans -- in a greatly slimmed down version -- were initially laid out on my hospital bed about two and a half years ago. At the time my "living" status was really up in the air, and my mother, unfortunately, had to sit and listen to her son talk about life after him. Initially, I was going to liquidate my few assets -- truck, guns, small shit -- and use what very little I had to start a scholarship. So this isn't my first go-around, but $30 mil is quite a bit more than a few thousand.]
I'd buy 30 million dollars worth of scratch off lottery tickets and double my money fast!Sorry, that's just the white trash in me coming out. Realistically, I'd use it to get custody of my son and upgrade my shop.
$17 million... In no order -Of course pay off debt. -Give $1 mil each to my mom, dad, and brother. (3 mil) -Take all of my closest friends on an expense paid trip to wherever we decided. (500,000) -I would buy each of my best friends whatever car they wanted for under $100,000 and make sure that the insurance was paid for. (500,000) -Buy a condo in Philly, London, and a house w/ land in my home state. (2 mil) -Buy a 2011 Ferrari 458 Italia, 2010 BMW M3, 2010 Range Rover, and whatever car my girlfriend may want. (500,000) -Invest the rest to collect interest. -Start a business (restaurant, bed and breakfast, bar) (1 mil) -Give $1 mil to charity (1 mil) Total spent: $8.5 mil Total invested: $8.5 mil
Besides all the normal stuff, a big piece of land to just blow shit up all the time. Just drink beers, blow up old cars and shoot guns. Nothing is as gratifying as just watching shit blow up. Oh, and a stable of F40's to just run into the damn ground. Oil change? Fuck that, hit something? duct tape will do, burn outs? all the time. Just put a nice system in each and just live rock and roll.