Foreword: I have been lurking here for a long while and love most of the posts on here and they have helped me in my lottery planning. And of course the obligatory link did the epic planning post: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vo34/whats_the_happiest_5word_sentence_you_could_hear/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Also, a little about me, married, one son in his teens, parents and step parents still alive, and a brother. I have step brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, that we are close to but don't see regularly, except on holidays.

So, now my plan: The Powerball jackpot today is showing a 280 mil with a 205 mil cash option. I'm taking the cash option. I'm going to assume to lose 50% of that to taxes as a high end, but seems better to err on the side of too much. That leaves us with a cool 102.5.

First things, sign the ticket, make copies, take photos, take photos with today's paper,  take twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was.

Take that ticket and put it in a zip top baggie and tuck it in a book on our bookshelf. Tell no one except my wife. Not even our son, for a while at least.

Go about hiring the estate attorneys, investment firms, and all that jazz (and later a second firm to audit and keep the first one honest). Set up a PO Box. Luckily, in our state, I can collect anonymously. Set up all the accounts and then turn in the ticket and get the money in the bank.

Then nothing. Not a thing for at least three months (probably six).

Still only my wife and I know, aside from the lawyers and such. And all of their letters go to that PO Box that we check off and on.

After some chilling down time, put my plan into full effect. First buy new phones and phone numbers. Stop mail service to our current address and forward all mail to the PO Box at the post office. Only give a handful of people our new numbers.

The lawyers will have set up an LLC for us that we will name when the time comes based on something we see in our house at the time (Green Basket, Blue Book, etc.). We would then give money to people using that name and still not tell anyone we won the lottery.

Number one: take 33% of the 102.5 mil to give to immediate family. That's 33,825,000 for those counting. Of that, my mother and father will get 40% (13,530,000.00), my wife's parents 40%, and my brother 20% (6,765,000.00). These would be set up into trusts for each of them. Knowing my family, if they had access to it all up front, they'd spend it all and have nothing to live on. I would give both sets of parents 1 mil of the money up front and my brother 500,000.

I'd pay the taxes on those gifts (close to 40%) out of our money. Then the rest of their money would go in the trust and each parent and my brother would be paid 75,000 a year and have the rest as emergency money.

Next we would start another trust with 5 mil to start a charity that pays about 200,000 a year to those in need. That way it can keep funding itself and make more money to eventually give more as it matures.

That should leave us $50,145,000.00 (I have a spreadsheet). Of that we would use 85% (42,623,250.00) from this that we would set up long term retirement funds as well as future trusts for our son and his future family. Half would go into medium risk portfolios of which we will use to live off of a modest 350,000 a year.  If we get 3% compounding interest for the foreseeable future, in 20 years that half (21,311,625.00) should grow to 29,201,625.11. The other half will go into longer term investments at higher rates and hopefully earn at least 5% to give us 94,628,159.26 in 30 years to retire on.

That leaves us with 7,521,750.00. After paying off debts (a lot of college and credit card debt currently) and giving generously to some of the rest of our close family and friends, as well as having our dream home built (nothing to big, we would still live pretty modestly, 3 bdr at most, but an amazing kitchen for me and a huge library for her), and buying new cars (again, nothing flashy, maybe a couple suvs [at least one all electric]), that world run around 4,264,000.00.

We'd also set up a bank account and put our first year's 350,000 in it (this amount contains lawyers fees, taxes, and other yearly costs, plus a little play money each year, according to my current budget).

Make some donating to causes and people we want to support around 250,000.

All of this money would come as if from the LLC and if anyone asked we'd just say "we don't know where it's from, we got it from some company called Green Basket LLC. You too? Weird." For a long as we could get away with it.

We'd have a bit available to buy some fun stuff (camping gear, bikes, small vacation, etc.) About another 100,000 up front, but then only live on the yearly until we retire.

We'd set it up so our son gets a yearly when he turns 18 as well, but not too much, and explain about not going crazy with money and all.

That would leave us a dainty 2,557,750.00 to play around with. You know for hookers and blow.