How Do Lottery Winners Spend Their Winnings? [video]

A key part of playing the lottery is dreaming and scheming about how you will spend the jackpot when your lucky day arrives.

It’s no big surprise that we’re all quite similar in what we would do if we won – clear debts, quit job, buy big house, travel etc.

Or would we..?

3,000 Millionaires – The Survey

To celebrate creating their 3,000th millionaire, the UK National Lottery have released some figures about what those 3,000 big winners really did with their cash.

And there are quite a few surprises in there too.

Quit Work, Or Can’t Do Without It..?

The first surprise is probably that only 59% gave up work – which maybe sounds a lot but it does mean 41% didn’t.

So either that’s a surprising percentage who love their job. Or the structure and social interaction that having a job gives seems to be too great for many people to overcome the fact they no longer need to do it.

And in fact 31% of winners actually do voluntary work, adding even greater weight to the argument that ‘we just wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves’ with so much time on our hands.

Do Winners Share The Wealth?

They certainly do.

The 3,000 winners collectively won over £8.5 Billion. But of that they gave a mammoth £1.17 Billion to friends and family. Which in itself has created 510 new instant millionaires.

That may sound generous but actually represents an average of 14% of winnings. Does that seem a little stingy? Would you be happy to give away more than that to your family and friends? (let us know by adding a comment below)

The Big House

Winners definitely go in for ‘the big house’. With £2.72 Billion spent on just their main home, that’s more than 31% of winnings going on the big house alone. Maybe it’s the hot tubs that 29% of them have that cost so much. Or the 28% that have walk-in wardrobes.

Mind you, those winners also cleared a total of 3,700 mortgages for their family and friends. With 390 of them giving their old home away too. So if your family don’t play the lottery yet, maybe it’s time to encourage them 🙂

You Have To Get a Car, or Two, or Three..!

That other essential instant purchase for the big winner is of course the brand new shiny car.

So what did our winners go out and buy?

Did they all go crazy on Porsche or Ferrari. Nope.

It was Audi, Range Rover, BMW and Mercedes by far. All 17,190 of them!

And yes, that averages to nearly 6 cars per winner…

The Luxury Travel

But they all now travel and have seen nearly every far flung glamorous corner of the world, right?

Well, not exactly.

27% hit the USA. Whilst plenty have been to a nice tropical island – be it the Caribbean, Canary Islands, Maldives or Mallorca. But 300 of them did also go out and buy a caravan…

It seems holidays at home are still a winner.

What Would You Do With It?

I can’t help thinking I’d be a fairly sterotypical winner too. Big house, couple of luxury comfortable cars. Sort out the family and friends. Help out my favourite charities. Then take it easy and enjoy the regular travel.

But it seems you never really know until it happens to you.

Have you got your ‘Winners List’ all sorted? How would you spend your ‘just go crazy’ portion of the cash?