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

[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