As Luck Would Have It - Hardcover

Joshua Piven is the coauthor, with David Borgenicht, of the globally bestselling The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook and its sequels, which have been translated into more than two dozen languages and adapted into a board game and a TV series. He lives in Philadelphia.

Chapter 1

Do Not Rip the Ticket or Otherwise Mutilate It

Steve Roberts is having trouble reading the numbers.

It’s dark outside, and he’s driving, so try as he might, he can barely make them out. It’s late, and he’s tired, and the woman on the radio is announcing the winning numbers over and over, since the drawing was hours ago, and the winning combination was sold. Yet still no one has come forward to claim the jackpot. With his ten tickets, each containing ten series of numbers, there’s no way he can listen to the announcer on the radio, watch the road, and read the tickets at the same time. Instead, he tries a quick glance at each Big Money Ball number, knowing that, without that number, there’s no chance he’ll win the Big Game.

But it’s no use, he just can’t see the numbers. He doesn’t bother pulling over, since it’s after 11:00 p.m. and he’s tired. He’s had a long day putting in and inspecting pools in the Michigan suburbs where, in May 2000, the hot, humid summer—his busy season—is just getting under way. He gives up on the tickets. And anyway that hot dog he ate at lunchtime, the one he bought just before he decided to pick up some tickets, isn’t sitting too well. He’d just as soon get home, see his wife and kids, maybe have a beer and a snack, and go to bed.

What are the odds that he’s the winner? Who ever heard of a guy like him winning the Big Game? Much less today’s jackpot, the biggest in the history of any lottery. And anyway, he’s never even bought a lottery ticket in his life. Wasn’t it always the guys who bought a ticket every day for twenty years who won? He puts the tickets back into his pocket and laughs—a tired, exhausted, end-of-a-long-day laugh. Then he sighs.

What was it up to now? Something like $363 million? He pulls into his driveway. It’s nearing 11:30, and he has to be up early in the morning. He sighs again.

A lottery win is luck in its purest form: unexpected, unpredictable, and with external causes over which we have absolutely no control. And, of course, there are the tremendous odds. These vary with the game and the number of tickets sold, but the odds of winning a multistate lottery are in the tens or scores of millions to one. These odds generally rise in direct proportion to the dollar amount of the potential payout: More money means more media hype, which means more people buying more tickets, which means a larger jackpot, which starts the cycle all over again.

But winning a big-money lottery game, while clearly lucky, often comes with a price, and that price can quickly turn untold millions into a liability instead of an asset. With big money comes big pub- licity, and on the heels of publicity come those looking for an investment, a loan, or simply a handout. Furthermore, many lottery winners are unprepared for their huge tax liability and for the suddenly needy relatives, the scheming business associates, and the jealousy and resentment of their friends and colleagues. Add in the huge psychological burden of dealing with sudden wealth and you get a depressing but sobering statistic: Two out of every three lottery winners either lose or spend all their winnings within five years.

Still, winning the lottery may seem like a problem well worth having. That wouldn’t be me, we think. I’d invest all my money. I’d play it safe. But the fact is that managing the good luck of a lot- tery win is not as easy as it might seem. Several researchers have even identified a psychological disorder, termed “sudden wealth syndrome,” that can result from a large influx of money and can severely hamper our day-to-day ability to function in the world. And these symptoms can afflict those who get sudden, unexpected wealth not just from a lottery ticket but via an inheritance, or even from an unexpected business success. Examining the story of Steve Roberts can tell us much about how we can manage the good luck of sudden wealth in our lives, so that we can learn how to use good fortune to remain fortunate.

Roberts (he asked that his real name not be used) is a workaday guy, albeit one with a fairly successful swimming pool contracting business. At age forty-eight, he’s doing pretty well for himself, bringing in $100,000 in a good year, although like everyone he knows he’s also saddled with a mortgage and a car payment. With one son still in college and his daughter about to enter high school, he’s having trouble keeping his savings in the five digits. Still, things are pretty good, and with a few more hot summers, he figures he might be able to dig a pool for himself.

The Big Game is a seven-state combined lottery. By May 2000 it has rolled over so many times that everyone has lost track of when the last Big Money Ball winner was. While many people pick the winning five numbers, they win only smaller payouts, generally about $150,000 each before taxes. Unless you have all five numbers and the Big Money Ball number, you do not win the jackpot. The May 2000 Big Game jackpot, at $366 million, is the largest in U.S. history, eclipsing even 1998’s $296 million Powerball jackpot, which had been split among thirteen lucky Ohio machinists. (A December 1999 Spanish lottery, called El Gordo, was valued at $1.2 billion but was split among thousands of winners.)

The night before the May 9 drawing, Peg, Steve’s wife, sees a news story on the size of the jackpot, now over $300 million, making the pot the most valuable in the history of multistate lotteries. Peg is by no means a gambler; she’s never even dropped a nickel in a slot machine. In fact, she and Steve have good-naturedly teased their friends about buying lottery tickets. With the odds against winning so high, what’s the point? You’d probably have a better chance striking oil in your backyard!

Still, she thinks, so much money! What would anyone possibly do with it all? Give it away to family and friends, she supposes, and to charity. And pay off the mortgage, of course. Pay off the car. She comments to Steve on the size of the jackpot and, with skepticism thick in his voice, he agrees that, if he’s somewhere where he can pick up a ticket quickly, he will. But he knows he probably won’t: He has a full day of work on Tuesday, and he’s seen the news stories, too. Those lottery places have lines stretching around the block.

The next day Steve has of course forgotten all about the Big Game. Instead, he’s thinking about the pools he needs to inspect and, if necessary, repair. With the weather getting hot already, he knows that by Memorial Day suburban Michiganites will be clamoring for relief from the stifling humidity.

At lunchtime, Steve heads over to Mr. K’s Party Shoppe, twenty miles north of Detroit, to pick up a hot dog and a Coke. While standing at the counter, he suddenly realizes that the store has a lottery machine and, even more amazingly, there is no line at all. He opens his wallet, figuring that he’ll pick up a ticket with the few loose dollars in his pocket, but quickly realizes that all he has is a hundred-dollar bill. He pays for the hot dog and, figuring what the hell, asks for his change in lottery tickets, receiving ninety-eight one-dollar tickets. He’s never played before, so he doesn’t have a lucky number, and anyway he’s in a hurry, so he just asks the kid behind the counter for “easy picks,” random numbers generated by the lottery machine. The clerk asks him if he wants the lump-sum payout or the annuity option; the annuity pays more in the long run, of course, but gives him no control over how his “winnings” are invested. He chooses the annuity. He laughs to himself. He can always change his option later, after he wins.

That night, as he fumbles with the tickets in his truck, he again wonders why he bothered buying them—and why he bought so many. He’s hardly rich, and he’s not a gambler (except occasionally on a game of pool). Ninety-eight dollars, while not likely to break the bank, is still a decent amount of money for him, and lottery tickets are not exactly a smart investment. Indeed, for someone like him, a strong believer in saving for the future, buying lottery tickets seems more like voodoo economics than sound financial planning. Oh well, he thinks, we all make rash decisions now and then.

As he listens to the voice on the radio, he glances down one last time. He does not see a matching Big Money Ball number, although in the darkness he can’t be sure. But who knows, maybe he’s just won $150,000. That wouldn’t be so bad. After taxes, it comes to something near a hundred grand. He could live with that.

When he finally gets home, he’s so tired he goes to bed immediately.

The next morning, as Peg pours orange juice, they watch the early news. The talk show Good Morning America is interviewing twenty-three-year-old Melvin Kassab, the man who sold the winning ticket. Steve comments to Peg that he looks really familiar. In a second he makes the connection and says to his wife, “That’s the kid from Mr. K’s, the one who sold me my ticket!” Peg thinks for a second, then asks Steve how closely he looked at the lottery tickets last night. Their eyes lock, and she immediately goes over to the counter and grabs the tickets, still sitting in a neat pile where her husband left them last night. She looks at the first of the ten tickets, reads the Big Money Ball number, then says quietly, “Steve, we have the Big Money Ball.”

But it can’t be. It must be a mistake. They both check again, carefully comparing the numbers on the ticket with the winning numbers, which are coming up on the screen every few seconds: 33, 2, 1, 12, 37, and Big Money Ball 4. They look at one another, freeze, and then time stops completely.

What is it like to realize, in an instant...