Janette Robertson of Forfar, like most lottery players, dream of winning a sum large enough to retire on.  When she found out she was one of the winners of the Euromillions Millionaire’s raffle, she and her husband decided to move the retirement they had originally planned for the later part of this year a few months forward.

One of the most oft repeated statements from lottery winners is, “I can’t believe this would happen to me,” or variants of the same.  This suggests that most people only half-believe the lottery tickets they buy will actually win. 

Dick Zelasko bought an easy pick ticket for the July 5 draw of  the Mega Millions from John’s Market on East Square Lake Road in Troy, and checked it a few days later.

James and Catherine Paterson, of Alloa in Clackmannanshire, were happy to think their lottery ticket had matched five of the numbers drawn, which would have paid them a £986 prize. 

The Irish must indeed be lucky.  Just this June, a lucky Irishman bought a ticket at Beaumont, Dublin and scooped part of a very hefty €93.9 million Euromillions jackpot. 

How does a lottery win change the life of people?  Well apparently, there are as many answers to that as there are winners, as this collection of stories from the past week shows.

Dietra Lovell, a home health worker constantly gets a ribbing from her family for playing the lottery.  As she plays almost every day, her mother Jo Ann complains that all her money goes into buying lottery tickets. 

Roy Grimes won the $2,500 a Week for Life scratch-off game of the Florida Lottery, and chose to receive his prize in yearly installments of $130,000. 

Desperate times call for desperate measures.  In what is seen as a reflection of the hard times people are going through, the Arizona Lottery reported a hefty 7% increase in lottery ticket sales for fiscal year 2013. 

John Baxter won a million pounds from the Euromillions Lottery in January.  Now eight months later, he says that the money has not changed his lifestyle very much.