As a soon-to-be lottery winner, I often ponder what goes through the minds of huge jackpot winners in those hours leading up to the time they discover they’ve beaten all odds and have actually won. What’s going through their minds the moment they discover that they’ve won, and even more so, how do they find out that they’ve won?
Does the day feel like any other day, or does it feel different somehow? If I woke up tomorrow morning as the winner of the PowerBall, would something in my gut tell me that, or would it feel just like any other day?
I did a little bit of research into what happens the moment somebody discovered they won life-changing amounts of money. There weren’t too many stories about it, but I was able to find one person’s recount of how their day was going right before it was to change forever.
I want to share a pretty fascinating story about how one individual discovered that he/she was a lottery winner. This story was told in answer to a question on the website, Quora.
NOTE: I say he/she because this person lives in a state where it is not mandatory to identify yourself if you win the lottery. The person in this story opted for anonymity at the time of winning this jackpot, and also opted for anonymity at the time of recounting the story. This person notes that this story happened about two years ago.
This individual was at work one day, about a week after playing the PowerBall lottery. His/her employer sent him/her home early because the workload was slow. This person recalled holding a folder that contained a bunch of trash. Also contained within the folder was a lottery ticket. This person noticed the lottery ticket sticking out of the side of the folder, so she/he removed the lottery ticket from the rest of the folder contents and then threw the rest of the things in the trash.
This individual took her/his car to the car wash. A machine positioned on the register was available for this person to scan the ticket, so he/she did. This person recalled that the message returned by the machine said, “ticket unavailable for cashing please report to original purchasing location.” This person thought that the machine was broken. As a person who does not carry a mobile phone, she/he could not go online to check the ticket that way. So he/she decided to give the ticket to the cashier and let the cashier do the check instead.
The cashier couldn’t get any reading from the machine either, other than the same message. She then called the manager, who also got the same message, “ticket unavailable for cashing please report to original purchasing location.” Upon receiving the message, the manager called customer service.
While they waited for the manager to contact customer service, the cashier asked this person to see the ticket again, and she would go online to check it. The person recounted that the cashier was stunned. The cashier told this person that she/he won $63.5 million dollars. This person then stated that he/she quit the job that same day.
Today this individual cares for disabled animals and has also stated that his/her family has been taken care of as well. The jackpot winner noted as well that some of the winnings were used to buy a home on a lake.
That’s probably what I am going to do too.
And it turns out that for this person, it was just another day, right up until this person randomly checked a ticket that could have very easily been thrown away.
What do you think? Do you think you will just “know” that you’ve won? Or do you think you could literally forget about it until it was convenient to check?