If you won big on the lottery, who would you tell?

[Kingdomofsleep]

I haven't won. (Yet?!)

But I do kind of love reading fascinatedly about the lottery curse, how big winners tend to fall out with their spouses and friends and family. My DH says we could prevent all that by telling nobody. I then asked if that included our parents, who help us out financially in a modest way sometimes, as we ought to tell them we wouldn't need that any more. Dh said we'd tell just parents. But MIL, who is lovely and I love her, is the town crier and would tell her whole village within minutes without thinking.

I've got a ticket for tonight's draw and I find myself idly worrying about this as if I've won the 15 million pounds already or however much it is.

I wouldn’t tell anyone about the full amount. I would casually mention winning a small sum and that I wanted to share with my brother and niece. Otherwise normal people get strange when money is involved.

Good luck op, hope you win!

When I win nobody but DH is going to be told, I like the idea of being a mysterious benefactor and surprising people.

Nobody if it was £1m. More than that I'd give a bit out to a few family but say the win was less than it was so they don't come asking for more later!

No one

Ha, one of my favourite daydreams. I would tell my husband, one of my (two) brothers (😅) and best friend. My parents have both passed away and my husband’s entire family live in Australia (his home country) so I’m 50/50 on telling them. They are good people but there are a lot of them but they live far away so…

Oh, I like the idea of playing down my multi-million win… great tactic!

This is so interesting because I wonder if this exact thing actually happened to my aunt. Just before I got married my aunt said she wanted to give me a money gift. It was astonishingly larger than we expected (like literally 100× larger than we expected). She gave the same to ky sibling. When we asked why, she said something vague about being grateful for some help my mum gave her many years ago.

Did she win the euro millions?! Maybe Overtheatlantic is my aunt, who actually lives on the other side of the Atlantic

I’d tell my family for sure, I’d want to share with my parents and sister, and my DH would do the same for his parents and siblings. Not sure on anyone else, my grandparents in their 90s I’d tell too I think. Maybe my 2 best friends so I could be honest with them about about new car/house etc that I’d be acquiring, I’d also want to spoil them a bit but I would be slightly worried they’d feel like I don’t have anything in common with them anymore and would drift…I think I wouldn’t tell them the amount , or lower the amount and say it’s a “around a million or more” if I won say 20mil
but yeah apart from that no one 😂

I couldn't do the play it down thing easily myself because my lovely MIL would get the figure out of us eventually. All my other in laws wouldn't ask questions but she would.

Other than my husband i would tell my best friend and my brother.
I'm not sure if i would tell my 3 adult/ teenage kids how much i had actually won and i would have to think long and hard about who else i would tell and it wouldn't be many.

I wouldn’t tell anyone except DH the full amount.

id say nothing for a few weeks until there was a big, but small in lottery terms win and then tell people I’d won that.

That way you can live a nice lifestyle, help people out and continue to do things over the coming years thanks to “good investments” without the attached pressure of a mega win.

If people know you’d won £50/£80 million they’d be unhappy with whatever you did as it would never be enough.

The only downside is they my adult kids and I have discussed this exact scenario so if I ever won like £1 million they’d be assuming I was hiding a bigger win 😂😂😂

Every last person i've ever met would know I had won the lottery without me telling anyone

Would you consider not even telling your dh (if you have one) the full figure? I tell dh everything usually but I reckon it's a possible way of avoiding telling anyone else, like MIL.

I have no poker face though so he'd probably know I was holding something back.

If you win big they do try and push you to do publicity - you know the thing with the big cheque and the champagne, little interview on the lottery site etc You have to be firm with your no. They do advise that once you tell even one person, the secret is out and if you go public they have people to help you manage press interest etc. To this day only DP and I (and Mumsnet) know for definite I won big (7 figures). I’m sure people suspect but only he and I know for sure.

People who treated me badly, who shouldn't have.
"Look at what you could have won"
Then I'd cackle as I moved away
Those lovely loyal friends wouldn't know, but would benefit.

Haha yeah, for a start I'm not sure I would be able to put up with any more crap at work. See ya later folks!

And they'd probably guess that way.

7 figures!! That is a lot. What did you buy with it?? Did you move house?

There's a particular road near where I live that has nice houses about 10× the value of our 3.5 bedroom house. I have told dh we'd buy there. The gardens are lovely. He said shouldn't I dream bigger than moving two streets away. Nope! We'd be able to stay friends with our neighbours

I wouldn't tell a soul. Certain people would get money each, totally anonomously, and I would say I did too. Nobody would know I was a secret millionaire.

It would depend on how much. If it was a massive Euromillions win I’d have to tell quite a few people as I’d want to give them money. If a small amount, like tonight (2M not 15M I’m afraid, op 😁) then I’d only tell dh and our two adult children because we’d keep it between us.

I wouldn’t tell anyone how much though, whatever the amount. So I’d have to wait a few weeks / months before telling them they were getting a windfall from me.

Can you tell I’ve thought about this a few times? 😆

Me and my husband often daydream about this! We’ve decided we wouldn’t tell anyone how much we’d won, but would just say a small amount and gift random amounts to family and friends every now and then. If we won enough that we could both give up work, we’ve decided we wouldn’t tell anyone we’d won that much and just pretend we work part time! So that nobody would know we’d won big!

I would only tell DH the full amount but I’d buy houses for each of our DC and make sure our siblings’ mortgages were paid off too, same for friends (I’ve clearly won a lot!) so they’d need to know I’d won something.

I wouldn’t tell a soul, I’d be very comfortable to say that I had some investments that came good.

But I wouldn’t want a stupendously lavish lifestyle, the home I have my eye on on rightmove is about £800k, I’d get a Volvo etc. I wouldn’t be vying for Elton John’s crown!

The thing is if I won big eg Euromillions then that is going to mean a significant upgrade to my lifestyle. I would want to enjoy that wealth so I would have to own up to some of it.

A few million would be easy to hide.

Hopefully I would win enough I could resign on the spot and give my similarly fed up colleagues I'm close to enough money so they can also give up work. Nothing for my colleagues who are awful. I might say to them "have a nice life", spin on my heels and walk out of the door cackling.

I would be so excited I wouldn't be able to keep it quiet! It is highly unlikely though, We do the lottery quite regularly and it's a bit of a joke that we never get even one number.