There is no doubt that plenty of people have thought about what they would do if they won the lottery.

After all, this isn’t just any lottery prize.

The current jackpot is $1.28 billion for Friday’s Mega Millions drawing. It’s only the third time in history that a Mega Millions jackpot has reached 10 figures.

While the odds of winning it currently stand at about one in 302,575,350, according to Mega Millions, that probably hasn’t prevented folks from rehearsing for their moment of victory. And it likely involves a victory dance and shouting from the rooftops “I’m a billionaire!”

But that’s exactly what a lottery winner shouldn’t do, according to area financial advisors and tax attorneys. You need to think carefully about what to do with those winnings, and that begins with being discreet.

“They probably want to keep their identity (hidden),” said certified financial planner David Jeter, a partner with the Allegheny Financial Group in Pittsburgh. “There will be people looking to prey upon you, who mean you no goodwill. Your house, your identity on the internet, your family can all be threatened if people know your identity.”

Pittsburgh tax attorney Shawn N. Wright agrees with Jeter.

“You don’t want to trumpet this because the lottery is rife with histories of folks who have won big money and then been targeted by people who resemble vultures trying to curry favor with them to give them money,” said Wright. “People are going to come out of the woodwork, people you haven’t seen since elementary school.”

That being said, Pennsylvania Lottery rules stipulate that in the interest of transparency, the commission must reveal a lottery winner’s identity.

Wright said many times when people win the lottery, they end up in disputes with other people.

“A lot of people go into these lotteries with agreements to split the proceeds with other people and those kinds of disputes need to get rectified as well,” he said. “Verbal agreements in Pennsylvania are enforceable.”

Jeter said the first thing a lottery winner should do is assemble a team that includes a legal advisor, a financial advisor and an accountant.

“You are in a new world now and you’ve really got to take time to make decisions,” said Jeter. “Slow down, delay big decisions and don’t change anything for a while. What we know from past experiences of lottery winners is it’s when they make quick decisions, big decisions, unplanned decisions, that things go awry.

“Everybody has an idea for how they can use your money. So you want to be very careful of feeling immediately like the most generous person in the family.”

Jeter said once a lottery winner has their team in place and comes up with a plan for how to live their new wealthy life, then it’s time to consider legacy planning.

“How do they structure things, if they wanted to, for family? How would they structure things beyond family for different causes that they feel passionate about?” he said. “It’s important to start thinking through that before starting to act on those things.”

Wright cautions that even if you win a billion dollars, you can’t afford to help out every single person who comes to you with their hand out.

“You can’t start lavishing the proceeds of the lottery winnings on everyone because the IRS is going to want its money, that’s going to go up to 37%,” he said.

“The IRS is going to have a target on your back. The IRS doesn’t miss things like this. You need to plan for the fact that they are only going to withhold about 24 or 25% of it. So, make sure you pay that extra 12% – which is going to be about $100 million – because no one’s going to have any sympathy for a billionaire who doesn’t pay his taxes.”

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