Every week millions of Americans walk or drive to their local convenience store to buy lottery tickets in hopes of changing their lives overnight, but for many who achieve that dream, it can quickly turn into a nightmare.
Taylor Insurance Financial Services Founder and President Eszylfie Taylor told BLACK ENTERPRISE, “70% of lottery winners go bankrupt within five years.”
The current Powerball amount is $170 million, and last month a California resident won a $2 billion Powerball jackpot. While you may think it’s impossible to waste that amount of money during your adult life, Taylor, a Concordia University graduate, knows it’s not that hard.
The financial advisor told BLACK ENTERPRISE the steps that everyone should take after hitting the jackpot.
Build a team quickly after winning
Taylor says building a team to plan your financial future can help ensure you not only keep the money you’ve won but use it to earn more money. “In an ideal world you want to live off of interest, so there are three things that you should do,” Taylor told BLACK ENTERPRISE. “The first is to protect your assets, you need to have proper trust structures and proper corporate entities established just to protect you, that’s key.”
“Number two, I would say is tax planning because paying less in taxes is just as good as getting a raise, so make sure that you’re minimizing your tax liabilities, especially if you have a lot of money. Lastly, is creating a great investment plan where you can ideally live off of interest,” Taylor added. “There are three things that work in life, people at work, money at work, and other people’s money at work, and you really want to maximize the latter so if you win the lottery and you manage your money and you manage your moves properly you can live off of the interest. Never invade your principal, just spend the bank’s money, spend interest.”
If you’re playing the lottery with others, have an agreement beforehand
Taylor cautioned that it’s easy for workers and families to buy lottery tickets together when the Powerball hits more than $1 billion, but when it comes to splitting up the money, it can cause fast enemies and arguments that ruin relationships.
Taylor told BLACK ENTERPRISE that communicating and taking care of things before you buy the tickets can save a group a lot of yelling and money on the back end.
“There’s something called a covert contract, meaning that we create agreements with other people based on what we believe is reasonable or based on what we would want to be done for us and what we think is fair, but that other person never actually agreed to it, hence the word covert,” Taylor said. “So the only way to eliminate covert contracts is that you be abundantly clear and communicate your needs and the needs of people that are around you and that way that avoids all confusion.”
Stay away from depreciating assets
You might be dreaming of hitting the streets and showing off your new luxury cars, clothes, and items to your friends and family, but Taylor says the best way to keep the money you’ve won is to buy things that appreciate with time.
“I’m partial to appreciating assets over depreciating ones and I cringe when people buy a Lamborghini but rent an apartment,” Taylor said. “You just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an asset that’s going to be worth 20% less the second you drive it off the lot, yet you’re paying rent to someone else. So again, in my mind, I would rather take the money and buy an asset that has the opportunity to appreciate any value or an asset that’s going to generate income and then use the income from that asset to then go buy the toys.”
If you can’t tell family and friends no, hire someone to say it instead
After friends and family find out you’ve won the lottery, they’re going to ask you for everything under the sun and after a while, you’re going to get tired of saying no and hearing the reactions. Taylor suggests letting your financial advisors tell others no, after all, that’s why you’re paying them.
“That’s something that I’ve dealt with when it comes to clients in the past and this is where I think again aligning yourself with a great advisor and a great team comes into play because you can make them the bad guy,” Taylor told BLACK ENTERPRISE
. “So I tell people all the time your uncle Charlie doesn’t need to like me, when he asks you for money say I have to talk to my financial guy and then I’ll say no, so that’s one way, put it off on other people because a longtime family member or friend that asks you for money and you say no, it could create friction, so that’s something where I could be the bad guy and I like playing that role.”Taylor, born and raised in Pasadena, Calif., attended Concordia University on a basketball scholarship and earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Management. The financial advisor also briefly played in the NBA for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Taylor spent 12 years at New York Life Insurance, handling the finances of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and has used his financial experience to develop his proprietary sales process known as The Taylor Method.