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A key part of playing the lottery, is dreaming and scheming about how you will spend the
jackpot when your lucky day arrives.
It’s no big surprise that we’re all quite similar in what we would do if we won – clear
debts, quit the job, buy a big house and travel.
Or would we..?
To celebrate creating their 3,000th millionaire, the UK National Lottery have released some
figures about what those 3,000 big winners really did with their cash.
And there are quite a few surprises in there too.
The first surprise is probably that only 59% gave up work – which maybe sounds a lot,
but it does mean 41% didn’t.
So either that’s a surprising percentage who love their job. Or the structure and social
interaction that having a job gives, seems to be too great for many people to overcome
the fact they no longer need it.
And in fact 31% of winners actually do voluntary work, adding even greater weight to the argument
that ‘we just wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves’ with so much time on our
hands.
Did our winners share the wealth?
They certainly did.
The 3,000 winners collectively won over £8.5 Billion. But of that they gave a mammoth £1.17
Billion to friends and family. Which in itself has created 510 new instant millionaires.
That may sound generous but actually represents an average of 14% of winnings. Does that seem
a little stingy? Would you be happy to give away more than that to your family and friends?
What about the Big House?
Winners definitely go in for ‘the big house’. With £2.72 Billion spent on just their main
home, that’s more than 31% of winnings going on the big house alone.
Maybe it’s the hot tubs that 29% of them have that cost so much. Or the 28% that have
walk-in wardrobes.
Mind you, those winners also cleared a total of 3,700 mortgages for their family and friends.
With 390 of them giving their old home away too. So if your family don’t play the lottery
yet, maybe it’s time to encourage them :-)
That other essential instant purchase for the big winner is of course the brand new
shiny car.
So what did our winners go out and buy?
Did they all go crazy on Porsche or Ferrari. Nope.
It was Audi, Range Rover, BMW and Mercedes by far. All 17,190 of them!
And yes, that averages to nearly 6 cars per winner…
But they all now travel, and have seen every far flung corner of the world, right?
Well, not exactly.
27% hit the USA. Whilst plenty have been to a nice tropical island – be it the Caribbean,
Canary Islands, Maldives or Mallorca.
But 300 of them did also go out and buy a caravan…
So it seems holidays at home are still a winner.