This Lottery Winner Blew Through $10 Million in Less Than 10 Years

With a $338 million Powerball ticket having been sold in New Jersey -- the fourth-largest jackpot in Powerball history -- it's a good time to remember that the sudden gains of a lottery windfall can be fleeting.

Imagine, for instance, winning $10 million and having almost none of it left less than a decade later.

It happened to Sharon Tirabassi, a 35 year-old resident of Hamilton, Ontario. Nine years ago, The Hamilton Spectator reports, Tirabassi cashed a check from the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. for $10,569,00.10 (Canadian). Today, after spending almost all her winnings -- "big house, fancy cars, designer clothes, lavish parties exotic trips, handouts to family, loans to friends" -- she's back in the working class: riding the bus, working part-time, living in a rented house.

What remains of her windfall is in trust for her six children; the money will become available when they turn 26.

"The moment I got it, I divided it among my family," Tirabassi told The Spec: $1 million to her parents, and $1.75 million among her four siblings. She was generous with others, too, buying houses and renting them out at low rates, paying people's rent, offering loans for bail and business ventures.

"All of that other stuff was fun in the beginning, now it's like ... back to life."

That other stuff included vacations in Cancun, Florida, Las Vegas, California, and the Caribbean, as well as four cars: a Hummer, a Mustang, a Dodge Charger and a custom Cadillac Escalade.

Tirabassi was a single mother, recently off welfare and newly employed as a personal care provider, when she struck it rich on Easter Weekend in 2004. As a teenager, she had lived in shelters, and all that money didn't come with instructions. Tirabassi didn't hire a financial adviser; she didn't even keep close track of her account balance. Suddenly, with just $750,000 left, Tirabassi woke up: "that was just time for fun to stop and to just go back to life."

Tirabassi's husband, Vinny, who brought three kids of his own to the marriage, shares her stoicism about the couple's lost fortune. He says he lived simply his whole life and is used to not being rich. Recalling the post-winning entreaties of suddenly interested friends, some of whom came asking for favors and then disappeared, Vinny says, "Money doesn't buy you happiness. It caused her a lot of headaches." His wife had a hard time saying no to those she thought of as in need: "That's the way I was brought up," she says. "Help those who can't help themselves."

For the complete story of the couple's financial descent, head over to The Spec.com, and check out the paper's 2007 interview with Tirabassi, when she had already spent half of her winnings.

Tirabassi's experience stands in contrast to that of Sandra Hayes, who pocketed around $6 million when she and a dozen coworkers split a $224 million Powerball jackpot in 2006. (Watch Hayes tell her story in the video below.)

Like Tirabassi, Hayes went on a spending spree -- including a boat, an Escalade and a Mercedes -- but she also paid off her mortgage and student loans, and was leery about handouts to friends and relatives. Today, Hayes lives comfortably but not extravagantly.

"I love a good deal, I'm on a budget, I save my money," she says. "I try not to live above my means." Her warning to the newly rich: "If you're not disciplined, you'll go broke. I don't care how much money you have."

Hayes sounds as though she might have taken lessons from Six Tips on How to Avoid Squandering a Financial Windfall. For more advice, check out these Powerball winners' lessons on how to hang on to your cash, whether you're a millionaire or just trying to make ends meet.

SEE ALSO: 17 lottery winners who blew it all >

Please follow Your Money on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Read More

The More Americans Know About Drones, the Less They Like Them

The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza gave his most recent "Worst
Week in Washington Award" to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., whose
assault weapons ban got stripped from a Democratic gun control
package last Tuesday for lack of support. Fair enough, but if
nonhumanoids can be eligible for the award (and why discriminate?),
I'd say that drones had the "worst week in Washington" last
week.

On Wednesday at a Senate
Judiciary Committee hearing, members from both sides of the aisle
seemed genuinely disturbed by the idea of "government drones
buzzing overhead monitoring the activities of law-abiding
citizens," as Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, put it. When one of the
witnesses, an industry lobbyist, complained that the very term
"drone" had unfairly "hostile connotations," he ran into a buzzsaw
courtesy of Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who snapped, "We'll decide
what we'll call them."

On Friday, it was more bad news for friends of our robot
friends. In ACLU v. CIA, the federal Court of Appeals for the D.C.
Circuit forcefully rebuked the Obama administration for
stonewalling on an ACLU request, under the Freedom of Information
Act, for records related to targeted killing with unmanned aerial
vehicles. Given administration officials' repeated public comments
on the CIA's drone program, the agency's refusal even to confirm or
deny the existence of responsive documents was "neither logical nor
plausible," the court said.

In the wake of the 13-hour filibuster of March 6 by Sen. Rand
Paul, R-Ky. -- in which he used the word "drone" some 245 times --
we're starting to see pushback from the courts and Congress on the
use of flying, spying robot weapons at home and abroad.

In an influential 2011 article, "The Drone as Privacy Catalyst,"
law professor Ryan Calo predicted that the dystopian images that
drones evoke could spur much-needed reforms to American privacy
law. Their association with military spying and targeted killing,
the way they "represent the cold, technological embodiment of
observation," would provide the "visceral jolt" that reformers need
to make their case.

That's certainly happening on the home front. CNET's Declan
McCullagh reports that a bipartisan "anti-drone revolt" has
prompted the introduction of new federal and state legislation
restricting "law enforcement plans to fly more drones equipped with
high-tech gear that can be used to conduct surveillance of
Americans." Professor Calo, who testified at Wednesday's hearing,
warned that "American privacy law places few limits on aerial
surveillance" and urged Congress to "instruct the FAA to take
privacy into account as part of its mandate to integrate drones
into domestic airspace."

The "visceral jolt" that Sen. Paul's filibuster provided seems
to be shifting the debate on the drone wars abroad, as well.

As Slate's Dave Weigel observed yesterday, public opinion polls
show "A 50-Point Swing Against Targeted Drone Killings of U.S.
Citizens" abroad since Sen. Paul's anti-drone marathon. Even
erstwhile Obama allies are speaking out: Gen. James E. Cartwright,
former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently warned
about "blowback" from perpetual remote-controlled war. And on March
13, John Podesta, the former head of the Center for American
Progress, took to the pages of the Washington Post to praise Sen.
Paul's filibuster and warn that with his secretive approach to
drone warfare, "President Obama is ignoring the system of checks
and balances that has governed our country from its earliest
days."

Some say the filibuster is an obstructive anachronism. Sen.
Paul's marathon session earlier this month argues otherwise. With
it, he started a national conversation about the use of drones at
home and abroad that promises to go on much longer than 13
hours.

Read More