Clonmel or 7 Playboy Mansions: How to spend the Powerball

Seven ways to spend the American lottery jackpot worth €1.46 bn

The Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles is to go on sale with an asking price of $200 million (€183m), says Playboy Enterprises. Video: Reuters

The American Powerball lottery was won at a record breaking jackpot of $1,568 billion (€ 1.46 billion) on Wednesday.

That is quite a substantial wedge, give or take the many millions you would owe in tax - but what would you do with the winnings?

We have come up with a few suggestions of how to spend the €1.46 billion.

Playboy Mansion

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If you fancied a playboy mansion or two, your luck is in (though we already guessed that). The Los Angeles property, famed for its extravagant parties and scantily clad women, is currently up for sale for $200 million, meaning you could buy seven Playboy Mansions with your winnings.

The only catch is you would have to keep a spare room for an 89-year-old male roommate clad in crimson silk pyjamas and with a predilection for young women.

Volkswagen Passat

A brand new out-of-the-box Passat could set you back anywhere between €27,295 and €35, 145, depending on the model. If we round that off to €30,000, our calculations show you could buy 48,000 Volkswagen Passats with your winnings.

Freddo bars

We are firm believers that you cannot truly quantify the value of anything without first calculating its worth in Freddo bars. They cost 30 cent each, meaning you could buy 4.87 billion of them - but please do not eat them all at once.

Motorway

It costs an average of €8 million to build one kilometre of motorway in Ireland, meaning you could build 182km of motorway. That would get you a direct route from Dublin to Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon.

Houses

The average asking price of a house in Ireland is €204,000. That means you could buy 7, 156 average houses with your Powerball winnings. If you fancied it, you could buy the entire town of Clonmel, Co Tipperary - which has 6,971 houses - and still have some change. One Clonmel or seven Playboy Mansions? Decisions, decisions, decisions...

Gold bars

The price of one ounce of gold today is $1,091.09 - but for argument’s sake, we are going to round that off to €1,000. There are 400 ounces in a standard gold bar, meaning one gold bar costs €400,000. With your lottery winnings you could buy 3,650 gold bars.

Islands

You could buy 48 Caribbean islands, based on the €30 million pricetag of the Lighthouse Cay island, which has over 6 km of beachfront and three interior lakes.

Niamh Towey

Niamh Towey

Niamh Towey is an Irish Times journalist