How do you stop your life being ruined by a lottery win??

[Foliageeverywhere122]

Inspired by the euromillions thread!

Ever the optimist, I started thinking about how exciting it would be if I won...and then started thinking about all those news articles you see in the daily fail about people who claim their lives were ruined by it.

So how do you actually enjoy a lottery win? Has anyone won (or inherited) a large sum of money and has advice? :D

How do you stop your life being ruined by a lottery win?

Don't win it! We're all safe tonight

Keeping it quiet depends on your lifestyle
before the win. I have a very small family and small social circle, have never been an oversharer, houses bought for immediate family and other mortgages paid off. Job given up, new rural house not ridiculously huge; address not passed out unneccesarily. Charity founded and donations to the select few.
Obviously if you work in Asda with no wealthy relative and suddenly buy a £3m house and lamborghini then it’s not going to be a secret.

I'd take the chance of it being ruined lol.

I don't have much of a life it could ruin.

Probably by giving ALOT of it away, I have a very tight group of friends paying off mortgages and making sure their kids education was sorted. Seeing my family in comfort and boasting a few under resourced youth and adult day centres in my locality would make me happy. Other selling my property and buyjng a 4 bed detached house with more than one sodding loo and a new but normal family car I wouldn't tell anyone or make it obvious I had a sum of money in the bank.

£1,000,000 wouldn't even buy you a tiny flat in some parts of London these days..
It would be very hard to hide a 'substantial' win- You'd probably want to move, and of course give some to family -BUT I'd rather win say 5 million than 100 million- as it just feels more manageable.

Dream on! _ I don't do the lottery any more, so very unlikely I'll ever win it.

I don’t do the lottery but I think I would keep my current house and buy an amazing home elsewhere, maybe 50 miles so not too far. I would keep my current home as my base so no friends knew. My family and DH family live abroad or hundreds of miles away. They would be visiting my current home. I don’t do social media so any amazing holidays would not be shared. I would make anonymous donations to local charities.

Interesting thread, and a bit of fun!

Agreed, tell no one. Me and OH have played the "what would we do if we won the lottery" game and we'd tell nobody but close family. All we'd want is a nice big 4 or 5 bed house with no neighbours, a nice car each and a nice holiday a year and we'd just leave the rest in the bank collecting the interest! Again, not telling a soul.

We'd of course help close family out with a bit of it if we won enough, but it's a tricky one because our close family includes a couple of people on OH's side who would blow it all very quickly and then be back immediately with the begging cap for more, be scandalized when we said no and spitefully tell everyone and his dog about it! Naming no names! coughhisdadcoughcough

So yeah bugger it, it would be pretty hard to stop it ruining your life actually!

If it was a ridiculous sum wait for a smaller jackpot and say you won that.

Put half in a charitable trust, set your criteria and pay someone else to manage it. Have a seperate begging letter fund and pay them to manage that too. Give a large chunk of the rest away to family and friends. What use is good fortune if you cant lift those you care about up to enjoy it with you?

Every one of you who say you'd keep it secret would be made miserable by it, frankly.

Give it away.

I wouldn’t tell anyone. I have a severely autistic son and I daydream about what I could do for him!

Name changed for this.

I have real life experience of this, via a relative who had a very big win.

They went public, and it was fine, once the begging letters finished. There’d have been no point trying to keep it secret - back then the papers were hunting winners down, and the sudden and extreme change of circumstances would have given the game away instantly.

Plus, keeping it secret is a big ask of any kids in the family.

Be generous - help out family and friends.

Help charities - but do it quietly.

Travel, take old mates along, share your good fortune.

It helps massively to have no skeletons in the closet. The tabloids dug and dug and found zilch, so there were no sleepless nights.

Take advantage of the financial and legal advice you’re offered.

Keep working if that’s what’s important to you - money should open doors, not shut them.

@TorkTorkBam

I think I read an article years ago, probably in The Economist, describing global studies showing that a lottery win amplified your life (for good or bad).

If you were broadly happy with your life before then the win would make you happier in the long run.

If you were broadly unhappy with your life before then the win would make you even more unhappy in the long run.

I think it was like having a baby: you think it will save a bad relationship but actually makes it worse; any flaws are amplified by it.

100% agree with this.

DH and I know after watching my uncles take everything of value from my late Gran's house and watching DH's family bolt straight to his late Gran's house before she had even passed away at the hospital that people, family in particular, are self serving greedy shits.

If we won a substantial amount on the lottery DH's DM would no doubt demand he give his sister (golden child) half or something. Or at least it would be no surprise if she did. Of course this would cause a family fall out when he'd say hell no.
So we have agreed. Anything we win, we declare just 10% of it being won.

So, if we win £800 on a 3 number Hotpicks? It's £80 on a scratchcard as far as anyone else knows.
£100K? We'd use a £10K win to explain buying a house. They just wouldn't know it wasn't put towards a deposit and its nearly mortgage free (cheap housing round here)

Same goes for the millions. Never let on how much but say enough to explain your new lifestyle.

I've been trading the stock market with a virtual account for a while as a hobby. I would just tell people that I signed up for a course with the country's most successful trading instructor, learnt how to trade the market properly and was at last reaping significant benefits. Simples!

I honestly don't know how I would manage a huge amount of money. But one thing I have thought about, is that I wouldn't want to spend a lot of time dealing with it, or dealing with a load of people who were only in my life because of the money. So for example I'd rather make big donations to existing charities than set up one of my own. I wouldn't want a load of properties that then needed looking after, or anywhere that required multiple staff.

It would be great to be able to give large sums to my nieces and DP's DCs and the grandchildren. Most of our friends have more money than we do anyway (and we are not hard up by any means).

Get thee to a Magic Circle firm, preferably one with an excellent private equity department.

Listen to what they say. Do not make anything personal: get individual trusts set up for any people you want to help and charitable trusts for any charities. Nothing comes from you. Trusts should have trustees, ideally professionals. Cloak yourself in the protection of professionalism. Even if you want to give it all away, it doesn't come from you, but from the trust. This is crucial.

Realize that you are rich but you are not the richest person around. If you win £100 million, you won't even make the Sunday Times rich list. You can very happily run under the national radar. My guess is that you don't know many people on that list, even in the top 50, unless they are famous for other things. Ask your new, very expensive trusts advisor what models they use. Copy them.

Go on one really, really, really amazing vacation. Don't put the photos on instagram.

*Help the really small charities, but in a quiet way. Buy a place that is animal friendly and adopt elderly animals, so they don’t spent the last years of their lives in shelters. Hire help, if you need it. I think if you quietly help others, even without them knowing it’s you, then you will get more satisfaction out of that.

If it gets too much, go and do voluntary work with people who have a lot less than you, so you get a better appreciation for what you have.*

Nicest thing I read all week❤️

About 90% would go on escorts and booze. The rest I would just waste.

Share it out amongst close and not so close family. Donate money to the unis the DCs went to, some charities, buy some land. Gone.
Ignore all begging letters (bottomless pit).

Not tell anyone the full amount, even those closest.

I would only give significant financial help to people I knew before the win if people did find out I’d had a large win.

Not that I ever do the lottery lol.

@AlecTrevelyan006

i know a couple who won about £3m in the fairly early days of the lottery. They were reasonably well off with their own business and apparently didn't tell anyone for a quite a while. They invested a lot of money in building up the business, bought a slightly bigger house, had a couple of fancy holidays and put some aside to put their kids through private school. A few years later they told a few friends and family but by that time all the 'cash' had been spent or invested.

Their business is still going strong.

Was this Kate Middleton's family? I always wonder if they won the lottery early on as I can't think how their party supplies business earned them as much money as they seemed to have had for a while!

As pp I would tell no-one. Any help or gifts would be relative to their lifestyle, my old one and modest.

Was this Kate Middleton's family? I always wonder if they won the lottery early on as I can't think how their party supplies business earned them as much money as they seemed to have had for a while!

The kids were educated through a family trust set up from the Lupton fortune 2 centuries or so ago. Mike Middleton as his family were educated via funding from the same trust. The details aren't known as it's a private trust.

Party pieces did very well, but they weren't as working/middle class as advertised - Mike Middleton anyway.

I would have a home base with comfortable but not extravagant fittings, vehicles etc, then another city with the works - go there to live large, keep my friends back home.

Holidays would be for "extravagance".

Otherwise, there will always be a couple of envious people who will angrily resent your good fortune, no matter how much help you give them. That's how envy works - they'll destroy themselves if there what it takes to also destroy you.

Keep it secret

Yup

At least for a time while you work out what you are going to do for the rest of your life. I personally would make up some bullshit excuse and go travelling for several months.

Never understand when people win they opt for the big cheque and champagne in front of the cameras.