Suppose you win a small lottery and have the choice of two ways to be paid: You can accept the money in a lump sum or in a series of payments over time. If you pick the lump sum payout, you get $2,950 today. If you pick the payments over time payout, you get three payments: $1,000 today, $1,000 one year from today, and $1,000 two years from today. At an interest rate of 8% per year, you would be better off accepting the payout since it has the greater present value. At an interest rate of 10% per year, you would be better off accepting the payout since it has the greater present value. Years after you win the lottery, a friend in another country calls to ask your advice. By wild coincidence, she has just won another lottery with the same payout schemes. She must make a quick decision about whether to collect her money under the lump sum payout or the payments over time payout. What is the best advice to give your friend

My personal opinion/advice would be to take the payments over time payout. There are many reasons for this, the first one being that most individuals are not used to receiving large sums of cash and usually end up wasting all the money as soon as they receive it, which usually does not occur if the payments are made over time. The second and more important reason is that if the payments are made over different years your would pay a much lesser amount on taxes every year that passes. This means that the even with the interest rate you would most likely have more overall money if you take the payments over time.