To be a bit frustrated with lottery winners lack of imagination?

[angelos02]

To the couple that just won £33 million saying they'd pay for their daughter to fly first class back from Australia. Get a private jet ffs. Buy a yacht & the staff you'd need. Bring back that 'spend spend spend' woman!

[frikadela01]

TheHiphopopotamus

Couldn't agree more. I seem to remember the couple that won the largest euro millions jackpot said they would stay living in their semi and wouldn't let it change their lives and would buy their daughter a new car.
Don't fucking play the lottery then.
I wouldn't blow it all on ridiculous luxuries but you can bet your arse I'd be buying a nice house and making sure my family shared in my wealth. Pisses me off.

[sillyoldfool]

I'd buy a nice family house, go on an amazing trip, pay off my family's mortgages, put some in trust for the kids, then the rest I'd spend on buying as many 'normal' 3 bed houses as possible and rent them out at way below market rent. Then just keep buying more and more. You could change the world, set people free.

[Horsemad]

I know the couple that went public when they won £53million last April.

No idea why they went public, I know I wouldn't!

[Purplehonesty]

I wouldn't go public either. I would tell close family and friends and pay off their mortgages.
Then I'd go on lots of holidays and give up work.
But I'd tell people (if they asked) that we had received an inheritance which paid off our mortgage and made us financially independent.

[AnyFucker]

I'd buy Mumsnet and get rid of all the trolls haha

[Bogeyface]

Sorry if this had been posted already but they were on the radio earlier and said that they went public because people knew it was won in their area and would soon guess. At least this way everyone would know and they wouldnt feel that they had to hide it.

When you look at it like that, makes sense really and they can pay someone to deal with the begging letters!

[ChatShitGetBanged]

then the rest I'd spend on buying as many 'normal' 3 bed houses as possible and rent them out at way below market rent. Then just keep buying more and more. You could change the world, set people free

sillyoldfool that's exactly what I would do !! and long long tenancies, basically as long as people paid their rent they could stay for life

I planned it in great detail, bought a ticket, and actually won 25 quid! must have been good karma from my honourable plans lol

[Darvany]

My in laws don't know each other very well so if DH and I won, we have two different cover stories, both of them extremely plausible involving inheritances and historical patent litigation

I would never go public. Anyone who has children would be mad to imo.

[iPost]

Sod telling the world. I'm not even telling DH & DS when I hit the jackpot.

I will suddenly be contracted for a textbook for a publisher in Asia. It will pay exceedingly well for the six months of MNing in the bedroom writing it.

And then I'll get wonderfully chunky (say ten grand) monthly cheques as my cut of the "royalties". With annual extra bonuses. That can buy a fab car here, a house upgrade there. But of course we (well, they) wouldn't know how long that would last so nobody would take it for granted and go bonkers.

So not only does the world not know, I have a cover story to stop working without people locally going and my family doesn't risk any of the "world turned upside down" that you hear about lottery winnings causing. DS won't stop studying and working hard at his sport in the belief he is sorted for life. DH will keep working (he loves his work, he'd pretty much lose his mind if he stopped, and if he knew I'd won millions it might make maintaining his income stream seem ...pointless). I know I have money in the bank to make sure family/friends get anonymous windfalls (I have a whole list of ruses for that purpose) I could support charities quietly and anon. If I heard through the grapevine of somebody in the area kiboshed by life I'd be able to have an anon lacky from a firm of solicitors (cunningly chosen from those available two cities away) to sort them out.

It will be great.

Life will stay in the sphere of normal, but more shiny.

I'm ready. I just need to win now.

[AnyFucker]

heh

[AnneElliott]

DH and I agree that we wouldn't hi public either. Both of our families would be all over us like a rash, telling us how to spend it.

We'd invent a reasonable sized inheritance to explain the exotic holidays!

[Ubik1]

They've said they are going to give money to the community to help following the flooding.

I think they are probably in shock. They seem lovely.

[steakpunararemediumwelldone]

I read an article a few years back about lottery winners and one of them showed some of the begging letters that they had received. They made me feel sick and sad so I can only imagine how it must feel to actually have them on your doorstep.

I agree about the 'I won't let it change me' brigade but there was a woman in the article who had won big but was keeping it quiet from literally everyone as she was terrified her husband would start drinking again after many years sober. So every now and then she dipped it and called it a 'work bonus'. I understood why she had not let it change her.

[FlatOnTheHill]

Why in earth would anyone go public.
They are going to have to take out K&R Insurance now for themselves and their family. Bloody ridiculous.

[TheHiphopopotamus]

I love how much thought people are putting into how they'll spend the winnings and what their cover story is

Top marks so far to ipost In fact, I may steal that for when I win

[sillyoldfool]

Brilliant chatshitgetbanned!
It would be so exciting to really change loads of people's lives, and to leave something so valuable behind.

[RJnomore1]

I wouldn't tell anyone apart from dh. I wouldn't tell the kids never mind go public.

[Want2bSupermum]

Pond55 When I saw the powerball was up to $1.5 billion on my way home from work last night (well technically this morning) I bought tickets this morning.

The jackpot is about $950million pretax. I would put $900 million of the money in a charitable foundation (oh and I would pick up the phone and negotiate my tax bill with the IRS) and my job would be running the charitable foundation. DH would keep his job/business as he loves it and makes stupid money anyway. The DC would be going to the regular public school.

What would change is that I would only fly private to Denmark and have NOTHING to do with SAS ever again. We would also spend all of DH's income whereas we save the majority of it these days. I think $30 million is plenty to have in your pocket and $900 million as a platform for continued charitable giving could go a long way over multiple generations if managed correctly.

[Darvany]

I'd never heard the term K&R insurance before but knew what it meant when pp posted.

I have a teenage DD. I wonder if you can get CL insurance? Or is that just called a trust fund?

[Want2bSupermum]

Here in the US I think you have to go public. No choice about it.

I told DH that I would hire someone to pretend to be me for the press conference. They would be blond and not 7 months pregnant! Total opposite of me so I would be left alone. DH said he would have one of the farmers from Denmark with broken English to come over and do the publicity.

[Bogeyface]

I have spent waaaaay too long working out my cover story, it is brilliant! Totally plausible as it involves a business interest of mine that suddenly "came good" but because of confidentiality clauses I am not allowed to discuss it

I have also worked out all the people I would help and how which I could do overtly thanks to my "business deal". Same with charities, my kids school being a particular beneficiary.

I have also worked out where I would buy property, including 3 holiday homes, which cars I would have, which house I would buy (very local and well below £1mill so I reckon I could persuade the owners to move) and that the kids would not be going to private school. I know how the house would be decorated, where I first big holiday would be (4 week roadtrip W to E across America ending with a week in NY and 2 weeks in Florida).

I have every last little detail planned out, all I need is the fucking winning ticket!

Oh and my sister and I agreed years ago that if either of us won we would give the other a pair of Jimmy Choos with a cheque inside the box, I will do that if I ever do win!

[LalaLyra]

they went public because people knew it was won in their area and would soon guess. At least this way everyone would know and they wouldnt feel that they had to hide it.

One of the things I disagree with the most with the lottery is that they do tell where the winner was from and shops get "Winning ticket sold here" posters. In many shops it wouldn't take long to work out who had won. Especially if one regular stops buying their ticket the week after a big win.

[specialsubject]

the couple who won over £100M have set up a charitable trust giving out grants; difficult to do without publicity. With that kind of sum I don't think you could actually spend it all yourself.

apparently there were 80% of the funding for the 'yes' campaign. So at least 2 people supported it..

that said, if we paid what gets pissed away in the lottery into the NHS, all the problems would vanish.

[CFSKate]

These cover stories are very impressive. Perhaps this is why MI5 decided to advertise on Mumsnet. They have seen your work and they like it.