Lottery what if

Posted on 27 Jul 2012 in Life | 1 comment

Tonight the Euromillions has an estimated jackpot of £105 million. Which is quite frankly an obscene amount of money, but what would you do if you won that much? Overnight your world could change completely. Here’s what I would do …

When the lottery was young

Back when the UK first launched the National Lottery the jackpots were weekly and I believe about £5 million each without being a rollover. I was just a few months away from my 16th birthday so couldn’t bet on the lottery and swore I would never be so foolish as to bet on the lottery, which of course was a foolish statement because eventually I did as my greed overcame my other faculties. Lets face it, anyone with a potential sudden windfall of millions, even just half a dozen, would go for it.

Of course since then the UK lottery is now twice a week and averages around £2 million per jackpot but its still the same thing. Low cost, potentially high gain, greed overcomes people’s ability to think about just how astronomical the chances are and that hasn’t changed.

So, lets get past the £1/£2 for a UK or Euro lottery ticket being a stupidly long shot and get to the “What if” on a big win.

Planning ahead

Step 1.

I would personally set aside enough cash in my own bank account to cover my current monthly outgoing for the next 12 months. Simple, but important. Make sure the plain cash flow is there to facilitate the rest of the plan. Of course with £105 million in the bank thats not really a problem …

£104M and change left in the bank.

Step 2.

Buy houses. Many of them. Assuming a yield of £500 per month in rent for every £100,000 spent on houses, which is probably conservative, then spending half a million pounds would get me £2500 per month before tax. Thats an income of £30,000 per year which really is enough for anyone to live on modestly, but obviously with that jackpot it would scale up.

For simplicity lets just spend so we end on a nice round number and have an income of £3,000,000 per year before tax giving you £35,000 per week to spend on whatever you want. Which is about the average annual income in the UK, so being 52 times higher should make life very comfortable. More on that later though. Importantly for me this means I have something to pass on to minime and can support him as he grows up.

£54M left in the bank, £50M worth of property which will (hopefully) just continue to appreciate in value.

Share the wealth

Step 3.

Share with the family. They have done a lot for me over the years and I would want them to be financially secure. At a rough count I would say beyond my parents and including aunts, uncles and cousins that would mean around 25 people. So why not make them all millionaires?

£29M left in the bank, £50M property making a tidy income, family all millionaires.

Step 4.

Share with friends. Beyond my family the friends I have in my life are really important to me and I would want to give them all a gift. With so much in the bank after the steps above I could give over 200 friends £100,000 each and still have several million left over. I’d probably find myself thinking of creative ways to surprise everyone!

£9M in the bank, properties making income, family millionaires and friends much richer.

Enjoy

Assuming I can keep my cool long enough to do all of the above, I’d then be able to go a little crazy. Probably find and buy a Jaguar XJ220, a nice big house to live in and pick a new city or country to visit every week for a few days. After all with that level of income every week it would be seriously comfortable living and I could travel first class anywhere at short notice without worrying about it.

Though who knows what the long term effect on my, or anyone’s, life would be with that much money?

Let me know what you think in the comments section. What would you do? How would it change your life?