1.6 billion dollars

[S.A. Boggs]

Say, if you won this sum would you be adverse to building a moat around your new home to keep some "relatives" away?
Sam

[Vern Humphrey]

Already done it. My home is 3/4s of a mile from the nearest road.

[dogtag]

I saw a beautiful looking island for about 4 million. I'd buy that - already has a moat + sharks.

[dryheat]

My brother said, he would get into philanthropy. I told him, I round up a 100,000 man army and then we'd do things my way.

[bruce]

That kind of money? Consult a good lawyer to structure how to handle it. Have a family meeting. Tell everyone to give me a little time to get everything organized. Then, next meeting, give them a portion of the money. Set up educational trusts for my grandchildren, etc. Give a full tithe and an equal offering to my church. Tell the Bishop that I'd like to be paid no salary but given an opportunity to work w/ inner-city at risk children/youth. But, retreating from the world ... Nope! Never! JMHO. Sincerely. bruce.

[Fred]

I’d use it to get our horse corral fixed, a new property fence put in around our land, a pepperoni pizza and some new warm sweats to wear for winter. Then I’d fund some animal shelters that need it.
Of course there’d be a list of good folks whose debts I would pay off.
Ive pretty much got everything I want or could need, so the rest I’d give to The Memsahib.

[JB White]

I can't fathom 1.6 billion. I can't even fathom the dividends at only 5% per year. However I think I can live comfortably for the next 20 years or so.

I once used plastic wrapped bundles of currency as a set of sawhorses while working in a certain vault*. That was about 1.5 million in cash. In two bales each about the size of a pallet double stacked with 5 gallon pails. I couldn't fit 1.6 billion in my entire house!

*Security at that facility was tight. In spite of my clearances it still would have taken almost an hour to exit, retrieve the horses and re-enter. The task itself was about 10 or fifteen minutes at most. I did ask permission, of course.

[dryheat]

Someones going to win, just not you.

[IditarodJoe]

Someones going to win, just not you.

Great line, dryheat. I have to remember that one!

[Allen]

You have a better chance of being killed by a freight train in the middle of the Nevada desert trying to outrun a fast moving glacier during a hail storm while waiting for the local ice cream truck to stop for you. But... one thing for sure: If you don't buy a ticket you surely can't win.

[barretcreek]

It would be nice to say I'd set up a foundation to defend conservative legal cases, buy a bunch of farmland from the Canadian border down to OK dedicated for youth hunting (bird hunting by kids, not dropping well deserving little delinquents into a cornfield....) give scholarship money to my schools, start a small manufacturing incubator for rural areas, buy easements to allow access to public lands, keep the feds in court over their self serving incompetence and a bunch of other stuff.

But what I would really do is track down the guy who offered to sell me his silver '67 275 GTB when I was in my 20s and buy it. Oh, and have more ex-wives than some Arab sheik.

[Allen]

Oh, and have more ex-wives than some Arab sheik.

Ex-wives? It may be cheaper to just rent them rather than purchase them.

I always said if I won the lottery I would buy enough guns to attract lightning.

[dryheat]

Getting serious about the lottery is a form of mental instability. I know a guy that has a large cardboard box full of tickets. He keeps them for some odd reason. It falls under the catagory of, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.

[dogtag]

Some illegal alien who can't speak English will win it.

[Vern Humphrey]

He already has -- the government has given him a pipeline into the taxpayer's pocket.