Winning the Euromillions

[Ellabella989]

If you won the £169 million jackpot tonight, would you go public or keep it private amongst your immediate family?
I’d like to think I wouldn’t go public but it’s such a huge amount of money that someone is bound to find out and blab.

I think the answer must depend on how extravagant a life you want to lead. If there is a marked and sudden upturn in lifestyle it will be obvious. I am happy in my home and have no desire to live a noticeably more extravagant life, but I would get immense pleasure out of being charitable, so most of it would go into a trust to do my little bit to make the world a better place.

Absolutely keep private

Planning for this eventuality is a favourite daydream activity for me. I have put really rather a lot of effort into thinking how to keep it private while giving to family and other good causes.

More recently, I have done finances for my parents, then my mother when she was left alone. It is known that there are some investments so money could be passed on via solicitors cheques reasonably easily. The amounts might be a surprise but who honestly is going to complain?

I am also aware that one the gift is given, there is no point trying to keep track of, so that, for example, if some of it were to be lost down the line in a divorce that would just have to be accepted.

Choosing the time to make lump sums available for the younger generations to fund study and buy houses would take a lot of thinking about. One would want to give but not to destroy their motivation. Flats to share as students gave us plenty of examples of what could go wrong....

Sigh, I know I spend far too much time planning for eventualities. 😀

Over the years, some of the charities I considered ideal recipients have turned out to be very, very flawed (kids company etc.). so that research for worthy causes continues.

We would tell family and maybe very, very close friends we'd won 2m or something. Enough to pay off their mortgages and treat them without them feeling bad but not enough to get any attention.

We'd work out our notice period at our works and just tell them we've decided to go travelling or something to avoid suspicion.

I'm part of a syndicate at work and I quite like my colleagues so I'd figure out some way of giving the other syndicate members something. Not huge amounts but something which is enough to make a difference maybe £10,000 each or something.

We'd make various anonymous charity / worthwhile organisation donations. I have a list in my head.

We'd still live quite modestly I think. I'd like to think so anyway. We'd bank / invest most of it and then would give ourselves the same weekly "wage" we have now but without any of the bills or work. We'd still like to live in the same area but would upgrade to maybe a 4 bed house with a nice garden. Most importantly, I'd get a cleaner. 😁

Ditto @FinallyHere.

I wouldn’t give to charity though, I’d try give to a cause directly so I understood what was actually needed.

And we wouldn't tell our kids much either. They'd still be expected to get a job etc although obviously we would have more flexibility to help them. We'd help them but they'd also learn what work is and how much stuff costs. They won't be "my Daddy bought me this and that and now I want this" kids.

@Jellybeansincognito 😀

I'd love enough to pay off the mortgage and maybe a bit extra for fun. It's tempting to think about the big house, but it could be quite isolating. Although most of my family have never visited my house as I live 1 hr 30 mins away from my home area and they are selfish. So they won't be getting any anyway, but they wouldn't even know what my house is like anyway. So keep it private !

Gah website is so busy I can’t buy a ticket!

I wouldn't go public, not in a million years.

I’d keep about 10 million and give the rest away.

It wouldn’t be much fun being rich if all your friends and family were poor. It would be much more fun to be enjoying life with your mates.

There are a couple of unglamorous disability charities I’d like to help too.

I would keep it to just me and partner. As others have said probably say we won a few million another week. Then I would go on a very very long holiday to come to terms with the win after, of course telling work to fuck off.

Then would start spending on a house and other property for my family oh and a Aston martin for me as well!

I think about this a lot although rarely play.

I'd keep fairly schtum. Tell family we got lucky and give each £1m to buy a house. Pay off MIL's mortgage and set her up somewhere that suits her disabilities better (so she can be free of FIL).

I'd buy a house, work part time/freelance as I love my job and spend the rest of the time knitting and at yoga. Maybe invest in some small independent businesses. Give to charity.

I'm quite boring really

My first question when we got the results from the Brexit referendum was ‘will we still be able to buy EuroMillion tickets?’. Every single person laughed, I still maintain it is a valid question but I don’t say it anymore

It's a perfectly valid question. The Euromillions actually put some info up about prior to the ref taking place (yes we can still play). I didn't wait for the referendum results to check what the what was - I wanted to know! ]

And yes, I will be keeping my win tonight private.
I suppose my sister's boyfriend might mention it to his family - but as I barely know him and have never met them I shan't let it worry me. My sister can deal with them.

*I don't understand people saying they wouldn't tell anyone.

I'd be going from a 3 bed council house to a 12 bed mansion with swimming pool, plus several holiday homes around the globe. Switching from the number 37 bus to several chauffeured cars.

I think someone May notice.*

I wouldn't tell anybody anything for at least 6 months, and behave as relatively normal while everything ticks over in the background. After that would tell a select few that I'd won the lottery, but never divulging when and how much. It's not about hiding winning the lottery as unless you spend nothing, it's pretty impossible to do that, it's about hiding the scale of it, to mitigate any possible downsides that can come from it.

It's a perfectly valid question.

It's not really, you can play it in Switzerland. Switzerland isn't in the EU.

I wouldn’t tell anyone, not even close family. I mean they’d find out I’d won as I’d spread a portion of it around, but I wouldn’t give them any indication of how much.

Buy an estate to hand down through the family

Help close friends

Buy property world wide

Set up a charity to direct without massive overheads

We'd give most of it away. In fact thats the main reason I bought a ticket. That's some good karma right there.

We just bought our house a year ago, so wouldn't be moving anyway. We're in the countryside which means it's detached and with a fair sized pretty private garden, what more does a person need?

I also wouldn't quit my job as I like it. I suspect DH would never work again though!

So it realistically wouldn't change anything much.

I'd fly first class for the rest of my life but the neighbours wouldn't find out about that!

We have a plan. We'd tell our friends we'd won a couple of million so we could afford a nice house mortgage free, which would explain the extra disposable income.

I'd buy a slightly bigger but beautiful house with a stunning garden in the next road, I'd replace my car but DH loves his. Our kids would stay in the same schools as they are very happy and the bigger but not ostentatious house would still keep us well within normal range of our friends here. DH loves his job and works for himself and I can't imagine him wanting to stop. I am a SAHM so no change to our day to day lives which is fine and would not want to disrupt our kids lives. I'd stop feeling SAHM guilt though. We'd have nice holidays.

I would gift enough to our very sensible siblings so that they could all be mortgage free and pay for all our nieces and nephews to go to university, or do whatever completes their education. There's no overlap between our siblings and friends so no-one would really know about that. I have a friend who I would dearly like to help. Then I'd keep a slush fund of max £20 million secret from everyone except DH and I.

The rest would go to charity and I think I would find this enormously stressful as I would want to solve the whole world's problems.

I'd buy a small holding with house. Put £1m away for private school fees/uni fees and living expenses for DC. Chuck about 5m in the bank and then build a private home for foster children with state of the art facilities and top notch therapists in house. Take all the kids/young adults the council struggle to house and hopefully put them in a better life situation. Then set them up in houses/flats with supported transitional living.

I can't imagine keeping it quiet for 6 minutes let alone 6 months 😂.

I'd give tons away and thoroughly enjoy doing so. Charities, for the homeless, DV victims, respite and end of life care homes - what a powerful thing to be able to do, change so many lives.

I'd travel forever with my bit, help really close family and friends but absolutely no publicity if it could be avoided. No jewellery, cars, big houses or anything like that, I'm just not interested. I'd buy millions of acres of woodland to protect it. Bring it on I say!

Private and pay for the best financial adviser and Publicist I can find to keep my situation under wraps.

Work would just never hear from me again, I'd courier back my laptop and work pass, then move home and change my email address.

Don't have much in the way of family and friends but the ones I do have would be set for life.

Would deregister DD from school for a year while me, DH and DD travel the world and find our new home.

Not bothered about cars, but I would like one that's hassle free so I'd lease a brand new, reliable runaround and swap it out every couple of years so I never have to do maintenance or MOTs.

Home would be something with a couple of reception rooms, a dining room, utility and 4 bedrooms. That would mean DH can have a man cave, I can have a sewing room and we could have a library/playroom downstairs.

Then we would work out the best way to benefit the charities we support, and invest enough so that we never have to worry about money in our old age and DD will have a fund for education, house, setting up her family whatever that ends up looking like.

It's not really, you can play it in Switzerland. Switzerland isn't in the EU

Yes ... but as most people don't go round with the list of all the euro million countries in their heads at all times, it's not unreasonable to wonder - ask the question and then find out the answer - oh yeah, it's nothing to do with the EU so won't change.

Clearly Camelot thought it was a reasonable question - because they put the answer on their website in the run up to the referendum.

I don't think I would go public although I bet it would sneak out somehow.
I would give my daughters and stepdaughter 1 million each and also give some to family and a couple of close friends. I would give a big donation to Cancer UK. Macmillan and our local hospice. Take a luxury cruise and buy an huge washing machine
All begging letters would go through the shredder unopened

I would never go public. I have a handful of close friends who I would give money to but I would keep it quiet. I’m very unmemorable apparently but I’m sure if I went public all sorts of people would come out of the woodwork and remember they were my best friend!