Powerball, Mega Millions: Ways to protect your money if you win

Tonight’s Powerball is worth $900 million, and tomorrow night $640 million is on the line in the next Mega Millions drawing.

If you’re lucky enough to win, there are ways to protect your money.

Inside of Vinny’s Bar and Grill and Carry Out in Moraine, people are seeing triple digits.

As the prize money has been growing, after both jackpots have gone for weeks without winners, so has the lottery ticket sales business in the Miami Valley.

“As that number gets bigger, that brings the non-players out. The people that usually don’t play. They’ve never played before, they need a little instruction on what to do, and so on, but they get interested when it gets to be $900 million,” said Jim Koehnen with Vinny’s Bar and Grill.

>> Powerball: Jackpot jumps to $900 million, seventh largest US lottery jackpot

With that kind of life-changing money on the line, News Center 7 talked to Shon Anderson about what you can do to protect your money if you’re lucky enough to win one of the jackpots.

“You don’t want to become a victim of the statistics, which a lot of lottery winners are broke after a number of years,” Anderson said.

Anderson is the president and chief strategist at Anderson Financial Strategies.

He’s also an adjunct professor at Wright State where he teaches estate planning.

He says the first step is to put a team together to make sure you’re thinking about that sudden wealth in the right ways.

“A good team is going to involve a wealth planner, an attorney, certainly an accountant, CPA. And don’t move too fast. Make sure you interview the right people that can help you with those situations,” Anderson said.

In Ohio, lottery winners have 180- days to claim winnings.

Anderson said to use that timeframe to your advantage if you win big.

“It is as fun as it could be to jump right in and grab that grab that prize money, letting some of the hysteria die down a little bit so you can be a little bit more overt in claiming this very large amount of wealth, but also be planning your team along that period of time as well,” Anderson said.

Another tip— Ohio is one of the states where lottery winners can stay anonymous.

Experts say that’s a good idea not just for your privacy and safety, but for financial reasons too.

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