I disagree. If you win that much money, you can afford to get a financial planner who will get you significantly better return than the assumed return on the annuity.
Unless you're talking about people who should get it a little at a time because they would otherwise blow it. In that case, you have a point, but that's for an entirely other reason.
I’m all for risk-reward. Drives me NUTS on Who Wants to be a Millionaire when people chicken out with $10K when they’ll only go down to $5K if they guess, and they have well over 70% confidence.
But in this case....I can see the need argument for the annuity. It essentially gives you 30 “extra lives”. It also makes it so you can’t access all the money at once - great if you have friends/family who are really, really wanting to mooch off you. Or great just in case you make a mistake - better to do it with a small chunk than one large chunk.
Yes, you’re essentially buying into a laddered 30-year structure that pays a very conservative interest rate, probably akin to the low interest rates of treasuries. And you could do better simply by sticking all of your money into an S&P 500 index fund if you’re not educated in the ways of the market, like Warren Buffet recommends (and has instructed his wife to do when he dies.) But also...when you have that much money, do you really need MORE?