No One’s Ever Become a Billionaire Quite Like This

California seems to have its first lottery billionaire. The state’s lottery confirmed that a gas station in Los Angeles County sold Monday night’s only winning Powerball ticket, meaning someone out there is free to claim the draw’s record $2 billion prize. (Powerball is an interstate game run by the Multi-State Lottery Association.)

The new Powerball billionaire, as I’m calling this unknown person (though their final take-home prize may be somewhat less than that), is entering an experiment in instant, no-warning wealth accumulation with little precedent. Other instances of sudden wealth tend to not be anywhere near this amount, and, additionally, most others who come into such life-changing sums at least somewhat expected it—as is often the case with inheritance—and maybe even had time to plan for how to handle that kind of ultra-wealth.

[Read: The $30 million lottery scam]

And ultra-wealth it is. “It’s sick,” Robert Pagliarini, a wealth adviser and the author of the book , told me. “It’s ridiculous levels of wealth.” To illustrate, Pagliarini broke it down for me: If the winner took the earnings as a lump sum, which is significantly lower than the advertised $2 billion,. If they then invested it in something low risk, like Treasury bonds, the interest alone could amount to more than a million a month—for the rest of their life. And that income would be available without even touching the prize money itself.