Ok so I fell down a rabbit hole on this and it kinda broke my brain.

That “70% of lottery winners go broke” stat — the one in every article and YouTube video, usually credited to a group called NEFE? The study doesn’t exist. Best anyone can tell, it came from ONE guy at a meeting in 2001 who just said it offhand. No study, no data. It spread so hard that in 2018 NEFE put out a statement basically going “we never found that, please stop crediting us.” Had to publicly disown their own fake fact lol.

The real research is honestly darker. Economists studied tens of thousands of Florida lottery winners — big winners (50-150k) went bankrupt just as often as small winners. The money didn’t save them, it just delayed the crash by a couple years. When they finally went broke, it’s like the win never happened.