You stop for coffees on your way to work and check the lottery ticket you bought on Friday.

Really ?? I did??

1. would call work to take the day off

2. Would call mom to tell her

3. Would call brothers to tell them

4. Would invite mom for lunch and we could discuss the good things that we could do with he money

5. Would buy mom a more comfortable house, the one that she has wanted for a while now.

6. Would buy a house in South France, possibly in Bordeaux



7. Would spend some of it on research organizations and NGO's for children with Cancer

8. Would buy some art pieces

9. Would buy a small restaurant in South Italy and would run it as my new business...

I would not know what to do with even a tenth of that!

I've given up buying the UK equivalent, the National Lottery. It used to be based on 6 numbers from 59 but a year or so ago the company that runs it and creams off the profit (Camelot, owned I believe by a Canadian teacher's union), put the numbers up to 50 and the ticket price up from £1 to £2.

Since combinations and permutations work on factorials, I think that extra one number effectively reduced the chance of winning the full prize, 50-fold. It had previously been about 13 000 000 : 1 anyway.

I buy the odd Euromillions ticket, which has a better chance of winning a modest sum, but only rarely.


One morning when I was buying it regularly, I examined my National Lottery ticket against a results slip.

1 match. No good. Nor two.

3. Oh, I've won back £10 less the £1 stake from the many weekly stakes!

4 numbers: not bad, a 2-figure prize. I had once won £45 (all right, £44).

5 numbers: Wow! A 5-figure prize!

6 numbers. Oo-er. I felt giddy. Get a grip! Potentially at least a million. Breath deeply, keep calm, think. Decide. Take it to the newsagents, ask them to verify it discreetly before I claim, for which there were rather complicated instructions on the back....

.... Then I looked again. I were wrong. That results slip wasn't. It was the ticket counterfoil - all three small slips of closely-printed paper were similar.

Ah, well, nowt for it but to set off for work.

I would secure the ticket, set up a trust to receive the funds, and would begin to make investments to grow the principal invested. I would, however, immediately make some donations to worthy charities, and I would pay for the college tuitions for the coffee guy and lady that I see most every morning as they are both students at a local university, and one of them has my friend and colleague as a professor so I really respect her ability to work nearly full time hours. Heck, I'd hire both of them to work for me, or as entrepreneurs with me as an angel investor. Both of them are are hard-working and remember orders such that your order is ready when you get to the counter, so I'd leave that door open, even through graduate school.

I would set up a charitable foundation with a portion of the money, a trust that would benefit a mix of regular contributions to specific entities as well as a flexible fund for discretionary donations, and would include provisions for specific micro-lending and grants in the developing world, whereby small community-based entrepreneurs could establish small businesses and grow them to fulfill the needs of their community. I would invest the trust funds from the initial windfall as well as from successive trust payments from my personal trusts, in stable, low-risk, boring investments, so as to have it grow and spread over many years/generations as opposed to single contributions.

I would invest in real estate, and would also buy a property in Europe for a base of operations, likely a pied-a-terre in Monaco, and likely a property close to London.

I would continue to be low-key and composed, however, comfortably wealthy, but able to handle the responsibilities and opportunities for such a life-changing sum. It would not be squandered on mansions, Ferraris, diamond-encrusted suits/boots .

First I'm off to find the best legal team available.
I have to break the rules because that will take more than a week most likely. I will find the 10 strongest local and national banks I can and put 250,000 in each. I will purchase humble log cabin style homes in the Texas Hill country, somewhere near Teluride, Colorado, and Florida. Nothing ostentatious. I will buy a practical land yacht that I can handle. Something smaller. I will put an add out for a good loyal 'road dog'. Human. I already have a four legged dog. I will invest heavily in real estate and sink some in custodial funds. I will set my daughter and her husband and my grandkids up. Take care of some good friends, and start a program for disadvantaged youth using music and performance art as a medium for expression, therapy, and possible growth. I'll engage in various forms of debauchery and hedonistic behavior and do a lot of travelling and 'playing'. Of course I will find a good luthier to build me a few custom guitars and have mini-studios in my homes. I want to have a bottle of every beer ever created in every country on earth before I die, but that might be a tall order.

Your chances of winning are so incredibly small I feel it is a waste of my money to buy them.
That money goes into my gas tank or buys my food, pays for my bills,or I could give it to a someone who needs those things.

If I did forget all that buy one and win, I'd like to think I'd help people out, but I would probably think of my own needs and wants first just as I do know, I suppose, only I would have more to play with.

This question has made me think,however,and even on my small income I could try to be a bit more generous and give to those who are much worse off than I am.

Sorry for the long winded serious reply I have my guru hat on today. ;)

First off I would not believe it and recheck the numbers a million times. Tell my hubby and daughter they don't have to work anymore. Get the money then get an expert to help me with handling such a huge amount. Take my time and only tell a few people, excluding long lost relatives. 😉

Buy my dream home, a secluded cabin in the woods. But number one thing, never having to worry about healthcare, retirement or anything else again. 👍🙂

[c=#7700B2]I run for prime minister but never show my face due to being shy.. so the first ever faceless prime minister here[/c]

Quit my job. Travel the world in luxury, smoke a shot ton load of weed. Buy some land and relax for the rest of my life

Here's your laptop and my badge assholes! Then an office setting reenactment of this scene.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcuYZCv3cKM]

Then to a lawyers office.

I can't think that big

the first thing I would do once I was conscious again would be to try really hard to never tell a living soul about it.

Coveffve