Will never order from @backcountry again
Order placed on 6/1 and chose “next-day air”
Still no tracking number and “customer service” keeps giving me the runaround
The spreadsheet math on this is brutal. She left roughly $54 million on the table. Yet she probably just made the best financial decision of her life.
$1M in an S&P 500 index fund at age 20 compounds to approximately $58M in inflation-adjusted terms by age 80. The historical real return is about 7% annually over 97 years of data. Her annuity pays $52,000 a year. Over 60 years that totals $3.1M. The gap is 18x.
Every finance account in these replies will tell you she's wrong. The compounding math is clear. Take the lump sum, put it in VOO, don't touch it for 60 years.
The Certified Financial Planner Board says roughly a third of lottery winners declare bankruptcy within five years. Illinois court records show 28% of winners who won $50K or more went bankrupt in the same window. The average winner spends 60% of their winnings on family and friends in the first two years.
She's 20. Peak impulsivity, minimal financial literacy, and every person she's ever met just found out she has a million dollars in her checking account. The $1M doesn't go into a Vanguard account. It goes into the most socially pressured spending environment a human being can occupy.
$1,000 a week is a permanent $52K salary, tax-free in Canada, that arrives whether she makes good decisions or catastrophic ones. Can't be drained by a partner. Can't be lost to a scam. Can't be "invested" in a cousin's restaurant. Shows up every Friday for the rest of her life.
The spreadsheet says lump sum by 18x. The data on what actually happens to people who receive $1M at 20 says she just bought the most expensive insurance policy in lottery history, and it was worth every dollar she gave up.