19-year-old wins $4M in the lottery, parents pressure him to give them $2M even after he was planning to give them $750K: 'They got mad and started calling me selfish.'

Emmy Pratt • Writer and Editor

May 31, 2026 8:30 PM EDT

His parents are lucky he's giving them a cent of his lottery winnings!

If you get one piece of financial advice, let it be this: never tell anyone if you win the lottery. While your accountant and your wife of 40 years might be exceptions to that rule, it's one that you must apply to every other relationship in your life. It doesn't matter if you win $2000 or $200 million; people change when they find out you have money burning a hole in your pocket. You might trust your friends and loved ones not to be greedy, but it's always best to be safe. Soon enough, you'll get calls rolling in about so-and-so's credit card debt and someone's son's college fund, and if you give in, you won't have any of your lotto winnings left for your credit card and college debt.

Of course, this is easier said than done. All of us think that if we won the lottery, we would be incredibly responsible with our winnings, never falling victim to the mistakes that lottery winners have made since the lottery began. It's like how everyone is the greatest parent in the world before they have kids. It's really hard not to tell the people in your life that you've won the lottery, especially when you're 19 years old, and those people are your parents.

The kid in this story tried to do a good thing by giving his parents a sizable portion of his lottery winnings, but that wasn't enough for them. They wanted him to give them half of his winnings so that they could throw it away on vacations and luxuries.

via Getty Images (Unsplash+)

_{A model, who represents a 19-year-old teenager who just won the lottery, and is struggling with whether to share his winnings with his entitled parents.}
Am I the bad guy for not giving my parents half of my lottery winnings?

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_{A representation of two entitled parents, who are taking expensive vacations using the money that their teenage son won in the lottery.}
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_{A picture of the house that the parents paid off before their son won the lottery and gave them hundreds of thousands of dollars.}
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