Cash For Life Lottery

I must say I'm a big fan of the Cash For Life instant lottery, the idea of getting $1000 per week tax free for the rest of my life is very cool! I just don't understand why some winners have been taking the $675,000 cash payout instead! If they are older I suppose I could understand that, but I've heard that a few younger winners have taken the payout. The problem with that lump sum payout is that you would definitely not be able to invest it in anything that would pay you as much as the $1000 per week! For starters, if you invested that $675,000 and even managed to get an amazing 10% return per year (which is highly unlikely) that would pay you $67,500 per year, but then you'd also be taxed on that amount too! So you'd end up getting less than $1000 per week. And most likely you would only find that you'd get 5% interest on that money year after year, so you'd only end up with $649 per week, before taxes! Not exactly the best option there! The one thing I would worry about if I won that $1000 per week would be if the government ever decided to step in and start putting a tax on lottery winnings. $1000 a week tax free is definitely enough money for me to retire on (even at age 39) but if they started taxing it, I would definitely have a harder time making that money work for me. What I would do if I won would be to immediately increase my life insurance policy to $500,000 (since my $1000 per week would stop if I died, so my family would not continue to get those lottery payments anymore) The next thing I would do would be to increase my weekly contributions to my RRSP, so that in case they did ever tax lottery winnings in the future, I'd have those RRSPs as a backup retirement plan instead of relying on that $1000 per week. One thing is for sure, things would be FANTASTIC if I ever won! :)