After winning the lottery, you must make some very serious, very deliberate choices. The first thing you have to decide is whether you want to accept your winnings in the form of a lottery annuity settlement, or as a lottery lump sum payout. The former would pay out smaller, lottery payments over the course of several years, while the latter would give you all the money in one go. Then, you have to decide how to invest that money, which if done wisely, can result in an even bigger fortune.
Before you win the lottery, you must also make an even more important, even tougher decision: what numbers to pick. Some people choose birthdays and anniversaries, while others choose their old locker combinations. Still other choose even their numbers for other stranger reasons, and in a number of different, odd circumstances have actually won.
Here are just a few weird stories of lottery winners.
The Same Numbers as Before. – In 2009, the Bulgarian had no winners in one of its drawing. In its next drawing, there were 18 people who won. What’s weird about that situation is the fact that those 18 people had all picked the numbers drawn in the previous lottery. Yes, that’s right — the same exact numbers were drawn twice in a row.
The Lord of Darkness or Luck? – On the day after President Obama was elected in 2008, his home state of Illinois had a Pick 3 drawing. The winning numbers were astonishingly 6-6-6.
Fortune Cookies. – People use the lucky numbers given on fortune cookies all the time, but in 2005, a single Powerball drawing had a whopping 110 second-place winners, who split a jackpot of $19 million. Each one had used the lotto numbers from their fortune cookie. Even funnier, the fortune actually read “all the preparation you’ve done will finally pay off.”
No matter what weird way you have to pick your numbers, you need to think carefully about how you want to receive your money — as an annuity or as a lump sum. Of course, that’s a tough decision many would love to be faced with, and if you pick the right, coincidental numbers as these folks did, you may get to make it.
