Winning the lottery is a lot like opening a pack of gum: everyone comes out of the woodwork asking for a piece.
But what if those people were your own family ? Would you still share the wealth then?
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When one man decided to keep his money for himself, he was left with a million-dollar question: is he a jerk?
This man took his dilemma to Reddit’s “Am I The Asshole (AITA)” community.
He began by sharing that he and his wife are both 24 years old. Each month, they buy a lottery ticket for fun. Well, one month they won big — $5.6 million big, to be exact.
As many lottery winners do, they took care of the boring expenses first, like paying off their debt.
This includes student debt, their mortgage, and car loans. This left them with five million dollars and a big question mark on what to do with the rest of the money.
The Redditor shared that he’s well-aware that around 70 percent of lottery winners go broke after a few years.
Since he works in the financial sector, he doesn’t want to be just another statistic. He also wants to parlay their money into early retirement.
Their game plan was to invest three million in a combination of mutual funds, REITs, and preferred stock funds for a very steady hands-off extremely low-risk solid return approach.
“With the 2 million we ended up buying a 5 million dollar apartment complex that cashflows and will give a high return with low risk,” he wrote.
This is where things got tricky.
When the Redditor told his family, he assumed they would be excited over him being so financially responsible.
But instead, they talked about the ways that they were getting a piece of the pie.
They wanted things like a big all-expenses-paid family trip and all of their debts paid off.
The Redditor had other plans. “I explained 5 million is a lot but not enough where I will be giving it away to family and they got pissed.”
“They said I wasn’t welcomed in this family and that I shouldn’t ever talk to them again,” he continued.
The Redditor later clarified that these family members include his older brothers, sisters, cousins, and aunts and uncles.
His father isn’t alive and his mother walked out on him as a kid.
But, of course, that didn’t stop his mom from calling her son for the first time in seven years to ask for money.
As a result of everything, the Redditor believes that he’s in the right because he’s doing what’s best for him and his wife. But still, he pondered whether he’s in the wrong here by taking his dilemma to Reddit.
Redditors quicly jumped at the chance to back his decision.
“You’re no longer welcome in the family because you didn’t give them your money? The entitlement is nauseating. NTA,” one wrote.
Another wrote that, if anything, the Redditor’s family should be happy for them.
“This. 100% this. I’d just be happy for one of my family members to be able to enjoy life outside of the rat race. Most of us just work till we die.”
“Your family has shown you that blood is not thicker than money,” another added.
Even though people sided with the Redditor, some people shared that they would’ve given their family some money.
This is all entirely dependant on how much you like your family. For instance, “Personally, I would have thrown my family at least 100k each as a one-time payment,” one user commented.
In the end, it’s pretty clear to see that money can be a burden!
To read the full story, check it out here .
