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Questions to millionaires and wealthy people

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Blackadder

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here is a post from reddit...on what to do with 100+ million if you just won the lotto....i'm sure it could be scaled to your income/savings



"So you just won.* Let's say, for ease, that you won a $185m jackpot, which nets out to just a few thousand dollars shy of $100m post-taxes (39.6%). How do you proceed?

__________

1) Tell no one.This is common advice, and it's completely correct. Not only will family and friends start begging for money (or treating you differently), but you are likely to have frivolous lawsuits come out of the woodwork. You will want to keep your windfall quiet until your legal affairs are in order, and it's best to minimize how much people know thereafter.

__________

2) Engage an attorney. Not a family friend, not someone you found in the phone book. Pick a firm from [the top 10 of this list](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_100_largest_law_firms_by_revenue) and ask for their Estate/Wealth team. Explain your situation (that you have just won a $185m jackpot and want to engage their services to plan and manage the claim) and do not settle for an associate - you want someone at the Partner level. They want your business so they will certainly be willing to either fly you to their office or will send someone out to you. I am not deeply knowledgable on the inner workings of this part of the process but it is likely that they will set up a series of trusts through which they will claim the prize, allowing you to keep your name out of the papers.

Yes, Skadden or whoever is going to cost you more than your family friend. A local attorney will bill you $200 an hour for your time. A Partner at Skadden is going to bill you $1000 or more per hour. But the benefits are going to far outweigh the cost - not to mention if they F*ck it up somehow (they won't), you have a company with a significant balance sheet to lay claim against.

__________

3) Managing your wealth. Your attorney will help advise you on the best way to go with this, but you have several options. Managing your money yourself through ETF's and index's is not one of them. That is F*cking stupid. If you want to play with some cash in the market you can take $100k and do so with no real risk.

So your options are really just these two:

a) Asset wealth management / private banker: In this option you will be set up with a small team of individuals at a major firm (JP Morgan, UBS, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, etc.) who will look to maintain and grow your wealth according to a set of parameters and a risk profile as agreed upon by yourself and the firm. They can provide a wide array of options, from you flat out telling them that you want your risk to closely track the equity markets (which they will advise against, for good reason), to the inclusion of bonds and derivatives, to what the industry refers to as "alternatives" (hedge funds, private equity, etc.). I do not recommend this option as the fees they take are not insubstantial and they have incentive to push high-commission products on you.

b) You can hire a family office. A "family office" is an industry term for a group of professionals and support staff who's sole task is to manage your affairs, your money, and your interests. [Here is a white paper on the conceptual and internal portions of a family office, written by Credit Suisse.](https://www.credit-suisse.com/newsletter/doc/doc_family_office_white_paper.pdf)

You can either hire on an established family office (called a "multi-family office" - one who takes care of the affairs of multiple families) or build out your own. They will be able to provide just as wide, or even wider, an array of products as a AWM/Private Banker as they can simply engage them as needed, but will also be able to provide options that are perhaps more suitable for you. For instance, a real estate boom of unprecedented rapidity in Phoenix may go largely unnoticed by an AWM team, your family office can analyze those trends and invest in condo developments in that city. They also operate without the conflict of interest inherent in AWM/PB on the commission side. They are paid a salary and potentially a bonus/management fee.

But their services extend far beyond your finances. Let's say you have a horse at your summer home in Montana that you would like brought down to your winter home in Texas. A single text message to your family office handles that - "need Mr. Cloppy @ ranch in Texas by sep 15th". Done. The rest is handled by them. When you want to buy a piece of property to build a home they will handle it for you. They will negotiate mortgage rates, they will analyze contracts, they will set up meetings with architects. Everything. Their job is to run your life as much as you desire so that it's not your problem. A friend of mine was dating a girl and her father believed that he was below her station (he was). The head of the family office was the one to deliver the message that he was to break up with her.

Work with your attorney to establish a family office. Let them handle your shit. They will be smarter than you are about basically every subject that matters. And they have your interests at heart, because their employment and compensation is aligned with your well being and happiness.

*(Note: A single-family office is best at around $100m and up, but still viable (especially as a "hybrid" family office) down to around $50m. Multi-family offices will still work down to ~$25m. Below that you are in AWM-only territory.)*

__________

4) Take a vacation. There is going to be a not-insignificant delay between the start of this process and when your winnings are collected, if for no other reason than that it will take time to establish the legal entities for your family office and the trusts/shell companies that the winnings will be moved through. But it's also just a good idea to wait in order to mask who won. So you should take a vacation. Like everything else your attorney will handle this for you, but you will want to take out a line of credit in order to fund your vacation. [That's no problem, as banks will extend lines of credit against lottery winnings.](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/03/us-morgan-stanley-lending-insight-idUSKBN0G30DS20140803). So take a 6 month vacation, spend $750k of your winnings, live it up. My recommendation would be to get out of the United States, because your absence is going to get noticed and you're not going to be able to hide your elation forever. [Go live in St. Barts for a bit.](http://www.luxuryretreats.com/destinations/caribbean/st--barts/gouverneur/avalon-112028) Use that time to get in shape, to read up on the finances that will effect your life so that you know what is going on. Go overseas and study your favorite subject at Oxford for a few months. [Go to Santorini and spend your next few months F*cking beautiful women](http://www.luxuryretreats.com/destinations/greece/santorini/fira/blue-angel-villa-108395). The world is your playground now.

And use that time to sort out, rationally, what you want to do with the next X many years of your life. Figure out the best ways to get to that goal with the help of your legal counsel and family office (which, if done right, will have a lawyer as part of it). If you want to start a cupcake making business this would be a great time to start planning, and you can spend a bit of cash to be taught what you need to know to make the best cupcakes by a world renowned pastry chef.

__________

5) One-off bits of advice.

* Use your attorney/family office as a buffer between yourself and all of the bullshit handout requests from your family. Your family office head is going to be a smart guy, and he will be able to identify the difference between a bullshit money grab and a legitimate request from a family member, so if you tell him "we can give up to $50k a year to family" he will do that. And he will also be there to be the bad guy when it's time to tell your cousin that you haven't seen in 17 years to get F*cked asking for money to buy a Dodge Charger.

* Do not hire your friends as employees. If you want your best friend from college to be around all the time, don't do it by making the guy your driver or your chef. Just give him $80k a year so that he doesn't have to work if that's what you want. Making them an employee is going to eventually build a sense of resentment. You are permanently altering the power structure in your friendship well beyond their dependence on you for an income - you are making yourself their superior.

* Don't buy a yacht. Charter them when you want to use one. They are an incredible waste of money. 1/5th the original purchase price per year for maintenance alone, plus crew costs, fuel, etc.

* Watch closely those who enters your circle of friends. You will have hangers on. You will have people try to take advantage of you.

* If you're a guy, get a F*cking vasectomy. I think the reasons are patently obvious and you can still have kids without issue. There is no downside.

* If you're a single guy and you plan to go on a bang-bender a prime avenue for extortion is falsified sexual assault claims. Wire your house up with hidden cameras. I don't think you can legally have them in the bedroom in any state *(edit: Some people are saying that you legally can. Based on my quick research of the laws surrounding nanny cams, it appears to be correct.)*, but the ones throughout the public area of your house should suffice. It's a cheap investment in your security and wellbeing."
 
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theag

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-Balance Sheet
-Equity Market
-Bonds and Derivatives
-Commisions
-AWM
-Condo Developments
-Legal Entities
-Trust/Shell Companies
-Line of Credit

Wtf bro, I don't speak alien...nonetheless I read your post a couple of times and it's great.
Hell I might even take a vacation to Santorini if I can, you caught my interest on that one.

58568797.jpg
 

OscarDeuce

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Well, here's what worked for me, step by step:
1. Start company
2. Sell company
3. Rent cottage on the beach in Panama City, FL aka the "Redneck Riviera"
4. Keep it stocked with pole dancers from Atlanta's infamous (and now defunct) Gold Club
5. Party, Party, Party
6. Wake up broke 6 months later
7. Repeat as needed

Yes, it's a true story.
No, I have no regrets
No Ferraris were involved, although a couple of the girls got Hummers as party favors.

Your mileage may vary,

Cheers,
O-2
 

Vigilante

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1. People generally don't walk around talking about their wealth to strangers on the internet. Ever, really. People who do are probably posers.

2. If you make a small income and don't save it, you can make a big income and not save it equally easily

3. I convert all my savings into gold bullion, and I keep it in a safe that I had constructed in an old barn in Aimes, Iowa.
 

Mr.B

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I was just curious.

There are some incredibly successful, smart, innovative and caring individuals in these forums who go out of their way to help others. The problem is, you're asking the wrong questions. Even if someone wealthy was to answer the above, how would that help you?

“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.” - Oscar Wilde.
 
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Vigilante

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Bila

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Wtf bro, I don't speak alien...nonetheless I read your post a couple of times and it's great.
Hell I might even take a vacation to Santorini if I can, you caught my interest on that one.

I am glad i removed my ( serious and thoughtful ) contribution....
 
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IceCreamKid

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Damn, this thread is crazy. Worthy of an Emma Watson post yo.

emma-watson.jpg


Seriously though, let's get back to work.
 
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Vigilante

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Say....where IS this barn....gps wise? ;)

For ummm ...reasons.

Just go to Aimes, Iowa and look for a big barn with a lot of barbed wire and a few guys on the roof with AK47's. We're probably the only one in town that meets this description.
 

Blackadder

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3. I convert all my savings into gold bullion, and I keep it in a safe that I had constructed in an old barn in Aimes, Iowa.

Say....where IS this barn....gps wise? ;)

For ummm ...reasons.
 
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Luffy

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You know what? You guys keep having fun, I'm not wasting anymore time here.
 

Mike351

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What the hell? Why is no one answering?

No one was answering because it is a question that doesn't need to be asked. Why is that? It is because on your way to earning millions, one would think and learn of ways to stash their cash. The main one is a magical skill called "investing". The good thing about that is that you make even more money. Which for some, like you will make you run around and flap your T Rex arms hoping to fly as you discover that because you have learned how to stash and invest more cash, you stash and invest more cash, saving you and earning you more money. You keep doing this until you can afford to buy a Space shuttle named Ranger-1 and in your cash fuelled haze, you proceed to fly off to Jupiter with your cash on board and a wire Transfer to Bank Of Jupiter so that no body learns how you stashed and earned at the same time. Nobody gets your money and you get to spend your days with topless 5 breasted waitresses on a green sand beach with glowing orange water. Sometimes Tiesto DJs there sometimes he doesn't. But with your stash of millions that you made, he would not say no.

Like others have said, don't stress about that until you have made your first million. Even then, don't panic. Be calm, calculated and smart about it. If you have to come on here demanding to know how the millionaires on here protect their millions, you don't have millions.... I shouldn't be commenting as I don't have millions either but I do enjoy seeing other people post "tell me how tell me tell me tell me how" type of posts.....take take take, no value given. The only thing free in this world is the scent of a woman on the bus sitting next to you, but that is only if she is wearing perfume. If you get one with body odor however, that will make you want to be fastlane even faster. However some are comfortable with it and will put up with bad body odor from a woman on a bus. Sick. Sick I tell ya.....Don't get discouraged by the Trolls, they are here to help you grow and develop and nurture your epiditimus.
 
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