[Closed] A colleague has just won £1 million!

[i]wife can pack up work, which means we save the childcare.[/i]

my wife earns more than me.

My kids are 18 and 13. I quite like the idea of my early retirement to do childcare 🙂

i'd rather cop £100 million on the euromillions

Plus on a more serious note exactly what @Kryton says

1000000 pounds would just about be the right price for me to consider doing 50k miles a year in any kind of car for work.

£100K for two kids to uni?

At a guess:

£50k each
Assuming they're not going to uni now, then at least £9k a year tuition, probably at least 10k by then so that's £30k

Then 20k rent, money to live on, etc = £6.6k per year - ie kids not having to take out loans.

I guess you didn't hear about the construction bubble in Ireland then.

No idea if it was worse than Spain, but then I was comparing Spain and England. Not Ireland. Or indeed anywhere else.

£100K for two kids to uni? Where? Princeton???

Well, fees for 2 x three year degrees would be £54,000.

I assume he means to cover rent and basic living expenses too, so at £8k per year that would be £48k for the duration of the course.

I reckon I could manage retirement on £1m from where I am now. Not yet 40 and managed wisely £1m would see me to the end. £40k a year (after tax) for 25 years, increased in line with inflation each year (invested properly), put a bit into private pension for when 25 years is up, cash in work and private pension and dance away into the sun. It'd just be living my current lifestyle which I'm not complaining about other than needing to work, take that out the equation and jobs a good un.

[i] trail_rat - Member

Somebody up there mentioned the jones. [/i]

Yeap, here:

[i] Kryton57 - Member

The decent 4 bed we'd like is not too far away from our current address but is circa £500k. The cars we'd like add up to £100k[/i]

nemesis - Member
£100K for two kids to uni?
At a guess:

£50k each
Assuming they're not going to uni now, then at least £9k a year tuition, probably at least 10k by then so that's £30k

Then 20k rent, money to live on, etc = £6.6k per year - ie kids not having to take out loans.

Yeah, I figured that'd be standard STW response 😉

If my kids can have enough saved by the time they get to uni not to need to then I have no issue with that. I didn't have to work which meant I could do the sports, etc that I wanted and study properly. Easy life compared to many, I know but I don't see it as a negative.

Once out of uni then they'll have to stand on their own two feet.

Are they allergic to work?

I know you're only being partly serious, but I worked full time through 6 years of university and although i'm sure it benefited me in some ways, it certainly didn't help with my ability to focus on my studies and it made me ill on a few occasions, particularly when trying to balance a full time job and exam diets. Still, needs must and all that.

If I have the opportunity to provide for my kids, I'd prefer them to work one or two shifts a week somewhere, to pay for stuff they want and for nights out, and I'd pay all the basic living expenses.

I would follow my dream.

I would hire an office space, with a cupboard in it, and paint the walls, floor and ceiling all white.

I would then pay someone 40k per year, with all the legal breaks, holidays etc to stand there and hold the cupboard door open staring into the white cupboard.

No music to listen to, no seat to sit on, just the job of holding the door open. No phones allowed, just holding that door open, looking at a white wall,under a fluorescent light.

Randomly, I would place either a black square or a black circle directly where they will be looking for a couple of hours, sometimes once a day, sometimes once a month.

I have always wondered how long someone could do this for. I feel 40k would be a fair wage for that role.

In my case yes to the above re Uni.

My numbers have nothing to do with keeping up with the jones or willy waving thanks Solo & Wrecker, they just represent what's I'd like to do with my £1m, and that my choice to make notwithstanding your judgement.

[i]I feel 40k would be a fair wage for that role. [/i]
I suspect you'd get arrested if you tried that stuff!

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-50226218.html

This is on the street I live on now...

Pretty depressing really.

Indeed. Yet another example of the British obsession with hideous "period" architecture.

Quirrel, first thing they'll want will be a workplace assessment...

...no seat to sit on...

Straight away your experiment is blown when you have to spring for a £1.5K ergonomic office chair, remove the physical stress of enforced, long periods standing and the right people can easily tolerate having their mind numbed almost indefinitely...

As for the other stuff: IMO London Dweller's should either be exempt from this debate or else the "Life changing" sum multiplied by ten for them, as it is the centre of Stupid, overpriced living and utterly out of whack priorities...

Time is the most precious thing we have in this world.

£1 million would mean not having to worry about paying the mortgage and a tidy sum left over. I'd be able to work selectively, my partner could do the same and we'd have all the time we'd like to be able to spend with our family.

So yes, it is a life changing amount if you choose it to be!

As for university, the current generation are fighting for an ever dwindling size of the pie. Who knows if university is even the right choice for them to help them achieve lasting happiness/success?

P.S: I am a not-far-from-London dweller

and that my choice to make notwithstanding your judgement.

nemesis - Member
Yeah, I figured that'd be standard STW response

If my kids can have enough saved by the time they get to uni not to need to then I have no issue with that. I didn't have to work which meant I could do the sports, etc that I wanted and study properly. Easy life compared to many, I know but I don't see it as a negative.

Once out of uni then they'll have to stand on their own two feet.

as it is the centre of Stupid, overpriced living and utterly out of whack priorities...

I love the stw idiocy and "holier than thou based on my own standards and surroundings tainted by my one eyed opinion" these threads being out.

You do know without London you'd be in the shit up there in your woodburning room with a view, don't you?

[i]as it is the centre of Stupid[/i]
Certainly sounds that way to me.

[i] curiousyellow - Member

Time is the most precious thing we have in this world.[/i]
Apparently not if you don't have the right house and car.

[i]So yes, it is a life changing amount if you choose it to be[/i]
Correct.

[i]As for university, the current generation are fighting for an ever dwindling size of the pie. Who knows if university is even the right choice for them to help them achieve lasting happiness/success?[/i]
Very good point. And if happiness is a means of travel and not a destination, then having the means to travel that £1M affords you could be viewed as a useful sum of money.
😉

You do know without London you'd be in the shit up there in your woodburning room with a view, don't you?

Back to OP, I'd clear the mortgage, buy a motorhome and spend 6 months here and 6 months travelling with the interest on the remaining 900k providing 3 times my current salary.

[i] wrecker - Member

Lighten up dude! [/i]
This, [b]too[/b].

[i]You do know without London you'd be in the shit up there in your woodburning room with a view, don't you?[/i]

I believe it was because of London that we all got screwed via the recent financial debacle/recession.
Thanks.

On a much more positive note, I just won £4M on a scratchcard. ;-d

On a much more positive note, I just won £4M on a scratchcard. ;-d

Is that all?

Barely worth posting about....

I know there are a few bitter types on here but **** me- £1m doesn't buy you much these days?

I'd be very very over the moon if I won £50,000 let alone £1,000,000.

**** me.

Hora - if you'd just won £1 million, I'd consider it.

Is that all?

Barely worth posting about....

Indeed! £4m will barely get you a detached house, a Range Rover Evoque, matching body warmers and enough hummus to feed a family of three in the South East!

Good to see this has sunken to a proper argument about money that none of us has.

And Kryton - in the first reponse on the thread you made a contentious counterpoint not knowing the first thing about the lady who has won the money. Maybe she will have to continue to work cos she's alreday a mill down with the bookies/scratch card cartel? So maybe you shouldn't be so surprised people answered your (rhetorical) question.
ANother route might be for you to purchase a million pound business or use it as seed money for a ponzi scheme I dunno but just buying a mediocre house to maintain the status quo and jizzing 100k on cars seems like a piss poor use of an opportunity to me.

Lighten up dude!

Does something make you think I'm uptight? Here on STW there's always something wrong with folk if they don't conform to the STW view of the world.

There have been several posters agreeing with my context, so why don't you grind some coffee, light the woodburner and take the time to think about that fact hat not everyone does or wants to live in the same way of life as you do? And should they want to spend thier winnings on a different way in a manner that appears distasteful to you, thats thier call to make not yours.

People have at least some freedom to make choices, mine may not be the same as yours.

I won £20,000 on the lotttery raffle in January,and it's made me a lot happier,all credit card debt paid off,more money around,good times.£1,000,000 would mean Mrs Dingo could retire and we could enjoy life loads more.

and enough hummus to feed a family of three in the South East!

I do hope you meant organic hummus darling.

[i] hora - Member

I know there are a few bitter types on here but * me- £1m doesn't buy you much these days?

I'd be very very over the moon if I won £50,000 let alone £1,000,000.

* me. [/i]
I've got a nearly new C/H headset you can have for a cool £100K, It's a bargain, by London standards!

You do know without London you'd be in the shit up there in your woodburning room with a view, don't you?

FFS, can we have an independent Yorkshire vote please? 😛

I do hope you meant organic hummus darling.

Of course...regular hummus is merely a token purchase by the lower middle classes to make them seem less "lower". Savages.

@Kryton57

Serious question, apart from the family connections is there anything else that keeps you in London? In another thread you mention you made a living in a consultancy type role. If you had the money, why would you not consider relocating to somewhere outside the M25 and working as you choose to and not because you had to?

A millionaire is not what it once was. My mate's dad is a millionaire if you consider his house in Surrey is worth £1.2 million. I know another person who has a few million in the bank. The former's biggest extravagance is a boat. The latter has an apartment on the continent and a large house complete with library up North. He rents both out.

Apart from not having to work and owning multiple properties the only difference between him and I is the volume of riding we do 🙂

Perhaps what Kryton57 means is it's not exactly a "my name is Hector Riva, welcome to my world!" scenario you'd fall into. Personally, having to work because I want to sounds pretty damned good to me!

A millionaire is not what it once was.

I beg to differ 🙂

1970...£1,000,000 = millionaire
2015...£1,000,000 = millionaire

Listen to what I mean, not what I say!

@curious - London and the South East offer a lot. Great culture including sporting events, restaurants, international diversity, proximity to airports and channel tunnel etc etc. I personally wouldn't move elsewhere in the UK just to find cheaper housing although others do.

[i] curiousyellow - Member

Listen to what I mean, not what I say! [/i]
Yes, the dumb indicator for this thread has now turned to yellow.
😉

[i]I personally wouldn't move elsewhere in the UK just to find cheaper housing although others do.[/i]
You're just "[i]me, me, me, me, me[/i]".
😛

Not as good as the lakes though is it? ;p

Yes it's horses for courses. We could could certainly do with more "arts" up North (I'm pretty jealous of the choice of classical venues, concerts and recitals down there). But I'll stick with the countryside available up here.

I personally wouldn't move elsewhere in the UK just to find cheaper housing although others do.

There are other benefits. Somewhere to ride a mountain bike, for example.

No music to listen to, no seat to sit on, just the job of holding the door open. No phones allowed, just holding that door open, looking at a white wall,under a fluorescent light.

But you'd have to pay someone 50K to supervise the cupboard watcher and make sure he didn't sit down on the job.

@jambalaya

I lived and worked in London. Yes, the culture is amazing. The other two I'd not consider valid reasons to live there. Perhaps it's me being cynical, but everytime I visit it feels increasingly like a slick money extracting operation from end to end.

You can travel to the West End for a show, likewise you can go to Heathrow to get on a plane, you could even make a special trip to go out for a meal at that hot new restaurant.

Things like seeing a show on the spur of the moment, or jetting off on holiday to the tropics is something only a select few can afford several times a year. Maybe even "millionaires" in London.

I was just trying to explain my logic. Give a choice I'd live in Switzerland, either the mountains or lakeside but I suspect £1m wouldn't be enough there.

Very good Solo ...

If i won a million i'd buy half of greece.. where i'd be a gazzillionaire!

Oh, and for any of you not bothered about winning any money < a million coz its 'not really worth it' then send it to mee coz i will certainly let it change MY life!

Serious question, apart from the family connections is there anything else that keeps you in London? In another thread you mention you made a living in a consultancy type role. If you had the money, why would you not consider relocating to somewhere outside the M25 and working as you choose to and not because you had to?

Its a fair point, until you work out just how far outside London you'd have to move to make that a realism. Surrey is the obvious reference in context. where I am - which is 1 mile inside the M25 so very much outer London, I can move 2 miles to get out, but it'd cost me more than the values I quoted earlier becuase I'd need a house near transport links, and therefore its costs a big wedge of that money.

Conversely, I have a friend who moved to Ipswich but works in Liv. St. His journey is an hour - not too bad considering the distance, and his house is values the same as mine albeit slightly bigger and the are less "up tight", but it costs him about £7k per year to commute IIRC.

Then finally I have colleagues who live in Bristol & Nuneaton who complain a lot about having to come into London to travel out of London again for a lot of journeys, wish they could [i]stay [/i]here but not live here. They are quite often jealous of the fact I am able to travel home faster than them.

You can't - or you can but rarely - have it all. I guess I'm agreeing with you, yes I'd move further out but close to, probably lose £650k of in Essex/Herts on a house for the four of us, yet not have a mortgage.

I personally wouldn't move elsewhere in the UK just to find cheaper housing although others do.

You say that now but then you go and get your shoebox in Shorditch valued and discover you can afford to chop it in, displace some locals in a picturesque corner of the west country AND still have a enough funds for a 2 bed flat in Guildford...

Time to call these two chancer's in:
[img] [/img]

Before you know it, Tabitha (or whatever she's called) is living the dream, Charging down B Roads in her Q7 on the school run, and setting up a boutique bakery in St Keverne. while you get to live a largely separate life in the SE rolling into the office on a train, ignoring the kids Monday-Thursday, doing whatever important stuff it that they do in [i]Laarndarn[/i] that can't possibly be done in any other major conurbation on Earth...

Hooray for London!

There's a lot of jealousy and resentment in this thread.

/troll

Anyway, I haven't won the lottery yet so there's work to do - I'm off.

Jealous? Damn right!

I would follow my dream.

I would hire an office space, with a cupboard in it, and paint the walls, floor and ceiling all white.

I would then pay someone 40k per year, with all the legal breaks, holidays etc to stand there and hold the cupboard door open staring into the white cupboard.

No music to listen to, no seat to sit on, just the job of holding the door open. No phones allowed, just holding that door open, looking at a white wall,under a fluorescent light.

Randomly, I would place either a black square or a black circle directly where they will be looking for a couple of hours, sometimes once a day, sometimes once a month.

I have always wondered how long someone could do this for. I feel 40k would be a fair wage for that role.

The girlfriend of a friend of mine won £5m. They've never worked since. Bought some houses and live off the income.

He works in a bike shop in byker just for something to do.

400k to sort out a nice house and toys plus a few quid in the bank and then the rest on houses to rent out- say 4 or 5 starter homes probably new ones for around 120k each ( you can do this in the Midlands) say 500 pcm = 2500 minus taxes means a nice income plus probably work another 10 years til I'm 60

What you do depends on your nature and what really matters to you. With me (my wife had a big win), I was more worried than happy. I was in the cafe with my cycling mates when I got a call and after the initial surprise and disbelief the first thing I thought of was how my relationship with friends and family would change. I didn't want anything to change for myself or my kids. Why would I, I was very happy with the way things were. So no splashing out on knob extension etc. We paid off the mortgage and I left my boring job to try and get into nature conservation. That didn't work out so I tried getting back into IT but that did happen either. So I was left with riding my bike every day. That might sound great but when my wife and son were working so hard I felt a bit of a lazy sod. Eventually, after a few years I managed to get a part time job and now feel much better about myself. We didn't move house, buy anything we didn't need and when I do buy something now it feels great that it was paid for with money I've earned. Luckily for me I've only had one person who has any resentment about it all but even he has run out of steam and I can now have a conversation with him without any mention of it. It did happen 12 years ago after all!

W-wait a minute.. all these stw winners suddenly popping out of the woodwork..

when is it my go?

1 million buys a lot of riding.

A million would put you firmly into the top 1% of the worlds richest people.

The 1% that are worth more the rest of the world put together.

Not a massive amount of Money these day's is it. I wouldn't reactive by leaving my job.

That's it now I've heard everything.

He works in a bike shop in byker just for something to do.

Must be sad having all that cash and not knowing what to do.

Well working in a bike shop is something to do.

Hmmm I bet there are quite a few on here who if they cashed everything in would have around £1m - so why don't they? I suppose I could move and not have to worry about how much I earned but hard to move away from where you've got used to.

The interesting thing is that there's a lot of 'worth' in having a job/employment. Even if it's voluntary.

I think if money wasn't a key drive for working, I'd enjoy working in a bike shop for a few days per week!!

DrP

globalti - Member

On a scratch card! They've paid her £5,000 and the rest is coming this afternon - and she's still at work!

Wish she was my pal...!

How did she claim her win?

For £100 like mine it was easy as I just went to the tilt at the supermarket but for £1 million I doubt the shop/supermarket will be able to pay up.

😀

Theres also a lot of worth going surfing, riding bikes, fishing, growing fruit and vegetables, cooking, brewing beer, tinkering and making stuff out of wood.
If i won a really big multiple roll-over jackpot id buy the business i work for, sack the staff and burn it to the ground.

True!!

I think with LOTS of money you need to be a bad smart and 'do something' rather than just 'buy things'...

DrP

If i won a really big multiple roll-over jackpot id buy the business i work for, sack the staff and burn it to the ground.

It's always nice to see someone happy in their work 🙂

I dont actually mind work plus i only do 10am-5pm .. 4 days a week with 30 holiday days/ year. Pretty much zero stress.

I dont actually mind work plus i only do 10am-5pm .. 4 days a week with 30 holiday days/ year. Pretty much zero stress.

Got any vacancys?

Apologies if this has already been asked, but did this [i]really[/i] happen?

There was a young lady working at John Lewis office in Victoria, where I worked for a time, who'd won lottery jackpot and carried on in her job there.

Ah well, this thread has brightened up my day. Just knowing that hundreds of miles separate me from people like Kryton57.

Priceless.

I think I'd certainly renew the drive train on my Solaris. After that, I'd have to think. I would hope it wouldn't make much difference to me, but you never know how you'd react.

Here's another question, would you tell anyone? I've thought about this before and I know I wouldn't tell any family or friends but I'm just not sure about my girlfriend, I think I'm worried that deep down she'd attribute future success to my luck and might feel a bit resentful.

Ah well, this thread has brightened up my day. Just knowing that hundreds of miles separate me from people like Kryton57.

Hey, if you fancy a beer, I'll pop round. Hundreds of miles is nothing in my 5 series.

[img] [/img]

Well if I won even 1/2 a million you wouldn't see me for vapour trails.
& I've got my letter to our management sorted just in case.

Wife got a job as a dental nurse at a practice, which the lady who left, won 3.5 million on the lottery. She decided to quit and help her husband run his electrical engineering company.

Ah well, this thread has brightened up my day. Just knowing that hundreds of miles separate me from people like Kryton57.

To answer this seriously, are you that shallow about having zero's in your bank account, that you'd selfishly rip your parter away from her family and friends, that same with your kids and thier schooling, so you can live in the country, have a humble job an ride your bike a lot?

I don't disagree that there's a difference in quality of life in rural vs urban, but in fact measured on tangible merits that quality is different yet equal in argument for an urban environment vs a rural one. Neither is better, except in your opinion.

In my case I chose to stay local for thier sake because that's what they currently want, yet improve thier lives where I can, the amount of money left being les important. If the decision to move to a small northern/French/whatever village was agreed to be best for the family, I'd do that. In fact if there was that money available there a strong chance of moving to the small island of barbados, living a humble life yet treating our kids to one,of the best educations in the world. Yes, better than Yorskshire, imagine that!