The Complete Guide on What to Do After Winning the Lottery

So you won the winning lottery ticket! It probably feels like a dream come true…and it is. But before you get too excited, there are some crucial steps that you need to take to ensure all goes well.

When most people think of what to do after winning the lottery, they think of what they could buy. However, your shopping list should be the last thing that you focus on. 

With that said, read on to discover more about how to handle winning the lottery.

Safeguard Your Ticket

Take precautions to safeguard the winning lottery ticket before anything else. You’ll be sad and out of luck if you drop it and can’t prove you’re the true owner. 

Make physical and electronic replicas of the ticket. Doing so will ensure that you have plenty of proof substantiating that the ticket belongs to you. Also, it’s smart to send a copy of it to the cloud and put it on a hard drive.

Get a home lockbox or put the winning ticket in a bank storage locker.

Wait to Claim Your Prize

Keep calm and hold your horses before cashing in your bucks. This is essential for two main reasons. For starters, securing your prize within the first few days of the lottery risks causing more of a fuss than required. This is especially true if the award is large enough to draw media coverage. 

Next, giving yourself at least a week to collect your reward gives you plenty of opportunity to prep for what could happen in the future.

If you want, you could wait longer than one week. Some lottery providers give winners up to one year to claim their prize.

Keep Quiet

If you’re wondering what to do after winning the lottery, it’s keep quiet! You might be eager to share the good news, but don’t. When you first get your money, take the time to enjoy it. 

But if you tell all of your friends and family, chances are they’ll be clamoring for a piece of the pie. If you desire to share or help those who’ve helped you in the past, that’s great. But just know, having a large sum of money might change those around you.  

Therefore, it’s in your best interest to quietly collect your funds and slowly and secretly buy the things you want. Don’t reveal your winnings until you’ve gotten a chance to get a grip on what it’s like to have such a large amount of dough.

Don’t Quit Your Job

You shouldn’t tell a soul about your good luck except for your close family members, and definitely not your coworkers. The last thing you want is for your manager to start searching for your replacement.

 After all, if you enjoy your job, you have a right to stay. There have been several lottery winners who continued working after hitting it big. 

Not only that, but hitting the jackpot doesn’t always mean you should stop making a living. You may need income to continue to coming in until you’re fully secure financially. 

What’s even more crucial is that anything can go wrong. Until the lottery money is in your account, don’t jump the gun. You may have heard the wrong lottery numbers or there’s a timeline issue with your winnings. 

So basically, act as if you didn’t win anything until the money is deposited into your bank.

Hire Professionals to Help You

Once your money is secured, it’s a good idea to hire professionals in different fields to help you manage it. Hire an attorney to help you figure out a will and trust for your family.

If your lottery winnings are millions of dollars, you should know exactly how to properly secure and pass down those funds. It’s also a good idea to get a financial advisor.

Also, if you’re new to having lots of money, you need help managing it. The last thing you want to do is to squander your earnings and lose everything in a short amount of time. 

Lastly, hire a public accountant to further assist you with organizing your will and managing tax season. Winning the lottery is great, but there’s a lot of responsibility that comes with it if you don’t want to blow your money.

Speaking of professionals, check out the highlighted link to learn more about becoming a settlement consultant for Right Way Funding.

Go Under the Radar

Some lottery winners have to go under the radar after winning a large amount of money. If you notice that being rich is causing problems, there are several ways that you can distance yourself from the chaos.

 Change your numbers and make your availability unlisted. It’s also smart to switch as many of your bills and information over to a PO Box. Doing so makes it harder for people to find your physical address online.

What to Do After Winning the Lottery

Now that you know what to do after winning the lottery, going through the process should be easier. It’d be great if you could just win large sums of money and not have to worry about anything else. Unfortunately, that’s not reality. There’s a lot that goes into stewarding a large lump sum of cash.

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