To think winning £110M overnight would solve a lot of problems but bring a whole set of new ones?

I would only tell immediate family but not straightaway and not how much.

Everyone else, I would say we had an unexpected inheritance and leave it at that.

We also have a plan of what we would do - I am convinced we will win one day so need to be prepared!

That kind of money usually does bring issues with it but you can do an awful lot of good with it too.
Of course we all want to help charities, family and friends and we would do but I wouldn't invest any in a business of any kind - they are usually doomed for failure anyway if a bank wouldn't loan them any money.
Plus if someone hinted or asked for any money they would be on a blacklist as far as I'm concerned. The money would allow me to gift to whom I choose so any begging letters would be binned straight off. I'd happily keep quiet about a win - it's much easier!

I inherited some money when my parents and brother passed. Less than a million but a life changing sum.
It solved a lot of problems, but it didn't solve my health issues and it turned me into a character from a victorian novel I had to keep meeting with lawyers and financial advisors and tax people. I also had to manage my parents property and employ someone to do the grounds!
I was amazed at the time this all took. If you did win 110 million it would bring an entire work load with it, sure you could employ people to do some of it but you still have to do it as well. You dont get holidays from it either I had lawyers and my financial advisor contacting me whilst I was on my dream holiday.
With lots of money comes lots of responsibility.
I am grateful for the freedom the money brought me but I was surprised by the administration.

Never done the lottery but I certainly wouldnt let a kid doing A levels know. Time enough after their exams when you take them on an amazing holiday to celebrate and tell them you can cover sensible living costs and fees for uni. Certainly wouldnt tell them the amount. Work is where many people find a purpose in life and I'd still want them to work.

Money brings different problems but also the ability to solve some problems more readily. It is the impact on the people around you that would be the hardest to deal with. Many families would expect a lot from you, possibly more than you'd want to give.

But would you upgrade their school? If they weren’t happy and there were better schools in different more expensive catchments or private schools, would you move etc.

If they were happy at the school, but like all schools strapped for cash would you make a donation to it to improve the library, tech, pay for a lifetime supply of glue sticks 😀

It's the loss of purpose. Most of us have to work in some way to keep things going financially. Even if you're earning more than a £100,000 a year, you're making sacrifices, financial commitments etc to keep a certain lifestyle up. At the level of 110 million you don't have to, everything is covered forever. So then where is your purpose? Lots of people fall apart at that point.

Oi, get back in line!!

No, I would not "sit" on that amount of money. I would invest in my children's education and housing. I would invest a vast majority of this in long-term investments continuing to grow wealth for my children's future.
I would not be buying them Ferraris and encouraging them to remain uneducated slobs fannying around in 5 star hotels in Dubai ordering 30k bottles of champagne and posting it on instagram.

I would let the dust settle and then let close family know I'd won some money.

Circa £12million.

I'd give myself siblings 2 million each (£6 million), my parents 2 million and then by myself a very nice house for about £3.5 million.

Id book a big family ski trip away over Christmas for us all.

I would resign from work invest the rest and give charitable donations.

How lovely.

You get advice apparently if you win a large sum. From investing to tax details. And I suppose handing out sums to others.

I think a lot of people (me included) don't really know how much that is. So I think you could tell people you won £1m, they wouldn't expect massive handouts and they'd just think you invested it well when you took massive holidays. Kids would still go to to school etc because they would know £1m isn't enough for generations to give up work.

This approach only works if you resist the temptation to buy a super yacht 😅

But you knew they were wealthy. If you didn’t tell anyone and you lived in a modest house, you couldn’t suddenly upgrade to a mansion or even a house that was obviously outside your means pre lottery win, without friends colleagues etc wondering how you can afford it. If local schools were dire, and you suddenly upgraded to private school or indeed just paid for transport to or moved to a more expensive area with better schools, people would know you had gained money in some way

I think Id quite happily accept the problem of finding out which of my friends/family are greedy fuckers for £110m tbh

I wouldn't tell anyone anyway, id maybe say Id won £5m. I have no desire to live in a mega mansion, the house Id buy right now I reckon would cost me just over a million. Give a million to my brother and my parents and my best friend. Thats it.

DD will still have to do her A levels, education is important. Again I probably wouldn't tell her how rich we were.

I think it would cause a crazy amount of resentment to let your children and relatives struggle with with relatively trivial money problems whilst you were sat on over £100 million. This is is why winning this kind of money creates different kinds of problems.

At the moment we all live our lives with very limited ability to achieve meaningful change in our loved ones' lives, let alone at a much grander scale. Knowing that you could do this obviously gives you great power but also great responsibility. How many rich kids have huge issues because they lack purpose? You could ruin your children's lives trying to help them with the money but equally you could hold it all back and this could make their lives worse. You could give money to lots of different charities but which would be the right ones?

I guess it would come to the point where you might feel that you're depriving people or organisations of money by not giving to them when you easily could do so. Why didn't you give the homeless guy money? How much is enough? What about the kids dying of illness or starvation in Africa?

I think we all like to think we are a good person and judge the super rich for not sharing their wealth more but when it came to it, what we actually do? It could lead to some kind of personal crisis where you suddenly realise that actually you aren't as generous as you thought when the money was just hypothetical.

Here's a problem if you won 110 million, what about the begging letters?

I would continue to send them.

Spike Milligan I think.

I would not tell anybody at all, apart from having a discussion with my bank on the best way to invest and inheritance tax planning.
Would carry on with my life much as before, although would move house, but keep my existing one, have it done up and rent it out.
I would do some volunteering and a bit more travelling.
I would review the overall situation in 18 months to 2 years and possibly tweak a couple of things.
Most importantly I would engage professionals to handle the nitty gritty.
But then I am quite boring and have done most of the things I wanted to do in life.

I agree. I think people underestimate how difficult it would be. I came from very humble beginnings and unexpectedly made a lot of money in a short space of time (albeit nothing like £110m!) and it has been great in lots of ways but strange in others. We choose not to move house but pay off our mortgage. I still work but sometimes find motivation difficult when I was always v driven before. Financial security has been a blessing but has thrown up some unexpected effects.

It’s interesting that you frame life in terms of ‘problems’. I wonder how prevalent it is, but I do feel like most people are worriers/ see the bad and what they don’t have, rather than make the most out of every day and focus on things they love/enjoy.

To offer a perspective, I have worked professionally with many such people, some of whom have become friends.

Many people who have made their fortune through working don’t see it as ‘new problems’ at all as that’s what they always imagined their life to be, and have surrounded themselves with aspirational mindset peers from a young age, staying away from the negative nellys.

Now, if you have won that amount of money, you may be quite unprepared for it, and what comes with it.

If you have a chaotic life, high drama relationships and grabby people around you, they’re not going anywhere unless you actively keep them at bay and change yourself. Your mental health issues/ addictive behaviours may be amplified much further. You’re likely to be taken advantage and learn from your own mistakes, stop trusting etc.

Essentially it’s a steep learning curve.

Talking of kids, it depends on what kind of values they’ve cultivated. You have kids whose goal is money and consumption. And you have kids whose goal is changing lives, shaping the world, self-development.

The latter can massively benefit from resources - look at our British no 1 tennis player whose parents are billionaires, or any number of ‘nepo babies’ who could do nothing but choose to do something and become someone.

From my own social circle, children of super successful/ wealthy parents are regularly the biggest delinquents, getting arrested for drugs at 13 etc. Boarding schools for HNWI children are quite extreme when it comes to alcohol, sex etc. Coming from money you feel different kinds of pressures.

It’s not black and white, it hugely depends on the individual.

But I’d frame it much more as an opportunity than ‘problem’ - you’re given a resource, how you use it is up to you.

Personally I wouldn’t quit my job for example but I think that’s an unpopular opinion.

I think it is actually really irresponsible as a prize. It would be far better for more people to win such a sum broken down into smaller prizes of ten million each.

It would be worrying if a person with very extreme views won it. And used vast sums to promote their ideas.

Arguably it already happens. But it could be dangerous. There seems to be an assumption that whoever wins is decent and normal.

DH and I spent some time fantasising about how we’d spend a big win last Sunday morning. But the reality was after sorting out our immediate family (and some of them don’t really want for anything!) we were a bit stumped. So we’d soak up as much financial advice as we could. And immediately resign from our jobs 😆

I wouldnt tell anyone except DH. I would tell my DC I have won a modest amount of money, enough to settle their mortgages. I would put money in trust for the DGC.
New kitchen , new bathroom (things we are already planning anyway)
Small local volunteer charities who struggle financially (especially animal charities) will get a big boost. I would also help those who have suffered catastrophes, house fires, illness, crime etc.
I would do all this quietly and anonymously and get on with life with a smile on my face ☺️

You would seriously sit on that amount of money and not give any to your DC until you die?

I think these amount of winnings would bring issues. If you are someone with modest amount of money and your friendship group is similar, so no huge disparity of wealth, with the best will in the world some things must change between you all. How many times would someone in your group say can’t join you in that event as can’t afford it, or if having a weekend away choose basic accommodation or if having a get together bring basic bottle of wine etc. Going forward you would never have those issues, do you offer to pay for the friend who couldn’t afford it, upgrade your own accommodation or treat everyone and bring expensive bottle of wine to parties. How many of us worry about money and share those worries with friends, mortgage rate, bills going up, unexpected garage bill, helping fund DC at uni etc. None of these things will touch you any more. If you won that amount of money and just carried on as normal what would the point be.

This was from when it was under Camelot, not sure if new lottery runners do things the same way. But interesting insight into how it works - www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32921080

My dad once told me that research had been done on football pools winners and the ones who are happiest 5 years on are the ones who win roughly what they earn in a year. Because in that circumstance you pay off any debts, pay a chunk off your mortgage, buy a new car, go on a nice holiday and the money is gone and you carry on with your normal life but everything is just a little bit easier and nicer.

If I won the £110m I think we would be fine because we just wouldn’t tell anyone. Our life has many different strands that don’t really overlap so we would be able to quietly upgrade each different bit of our lives without people putting it all together. Not in a £110m way but in small ways. In time I might invent an inheritance from a random aunt we never really knew just in case anyone questions things. We would then have time and space to think about what we actually wanted to do with the money. I like the idea of picking a disease and giving enough money that a cure could be found. I also like the idea of locking up the money in some kind of family trust so that all my descendents for the next 100 years don’t have to worry about boring things like student loans and house deposits but still have to work as normal.

I'm prepared to take one for the team and give it a go!!