How to handle a massive windfall
If you want to be happy, treat the family but don’t go on a big spending spree
To the delight of my turf accountant, and the despair of my actual accountant, I’ve never had much luck when it comes to gambling. Even my repeated attempts at the village tombola have earned me little more than the occasional pair of socks. So I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of envy when I read about Joe and Jess Thwaite, who have just gone public as winners of Britain’s biggest EuroMillions lottery jackpot, says Marcus Parekh in The Daily Telegraph. Their haul of £184,262,899 displaces the previous record of £170m, which was set by an anonymous winner in October 2019.
Lottery riches are not, of course, always a blessing, says Jon Rogers in The Scottish Sun. Take Jane Park, who became one of Britain’s youngest winners of the EuroMillions, scooping £1m in 2013. She spent some of the cash getting her “dream body”, yet just a few years later launched a website where potential suitors could apply to date her, offering the lucky winner “an annual ‘allowance’ of £60,000 to wine and dine her”. Former mechanic Neil Trotter used his £107.9m winnings in 2014 to buy a Grade II-listed mansion with its own lake set in 400 acres of land, but admitted five years later “he had struggled to cope with his wealth”.
There are darker “cautionary tales”, says Matthew Weaver in The Guardian. Ex-binman Michael Carroll, the self-styled “king of chavs” who won £10m in 2002 while wearing an electronic tag, blew his fortune on “drugs, sex and gold” and he was declared bankrupt eight years after his win. Lee Ryan won £6.5m shortly after the National Lottery launched in 1994, but later called his jackpot “cursed” – he was jailed for handling stolen cars and ended up sleeping rough in London.
Splashing out on a Skoda
Nevertheless, the odds remain very much on the Thwaites’ side. Contrary to the “pseudoscience” of some psychologists, the myth that “winning a lot of money, from any source, does not make you happy”, is just that, a myth, says Hunter Davies in The Times. Davies has interviewed many past lottery winners and found, from “endless questions and the winners’ own evaluation of their lives”, that “about 90% were indeed happier” following their win. It seems that the key is moderation – most winners abstain from big spending sprees and instead choose to live in the same area, in only a “slightly bigger house”, and focus on helping their families.
The Thwaites, who are currently living in a rented property, seem to be closer in attitude to Davies’s subjects than to some of the horror stories. They have said that they intend to spend some of the money on trips to “visit friends around the world they haven’t seen ‘for years and years’ and have fun with their family”, including possibly a trip to Hawaii, says Jane Phillips in the Daily Mail. But their only big purchase so far has been a new chest of drawers.
Joe insists that his dream car is more a “Skoda Superb Estate” than anything flashier. We wish them every happiness.
“The key is moderation – most winners abstain from big spending sprees, choose to live in the same area, and focus on helping their families”