Lottery winner has huge decision to make after winning $1.1 billion jackpot

Let’s be real, we’ve all had dreams of winning the lottery. And it’s a pretty standard icebreaker question either way.

The debates over what you’d spend your money on are endless; would you donate some of it to charity? Would you go travelling? Would you save any of it?

But you might not always consider another huge decision that comes with winning.

And a recent lottery winner has something to really consider after bagging the $1.1 billion (£871.25 million) Mega Millions jackpot.

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Someone in New Jersey broke the months-long winless streak earlier this week with the numbers 7, 11, 22, 29, 38 and 4.

The absolute whopper of money is said to be the eight largest sum won in US lottery history and the odds of even bagging it are crazy.

The Mega Millions jackpot is unsurprisingly pretty tough to win, with a 1 in 302.6 million chance.

But lottery winners have to decide between getting a big fat lump sum of cash or getting the prize in 29 instalments. So, the actual $1.12 billion jackpot is for a winner who chooses to be paid through an annuity.

They’d then receive an initial payment and then 29 annual payments.

Or, as most winners decide to do, the cash pay-out would give the winner a lump sum of $537.5 million (£425.67 million).

Whatever the Mega Millions jackpot winner decides to do, that’s a f**king shed load of cash they’ve landed.

But a lottery winner previously issued a warning to others after learning a brutal lesson.

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When Frank Kemmler won tens of thousands on the Lotto, he was buzzing to be able to book a big holiday for his family.

But the buzz was crushed for the Aussie when he went out to fill some paperwork regarding his disability support pension where he was told it was ‘bye bye to the pension’.

“[It] was a bit of a disillusionment. You think you win on the one hand, but they take it away with the other hand,” he said.

Kemmler’s GP appointments and medication was previously covered under his pension but after winning, he was forced to fork out the full price.

“The pension is not really my main worry, because I'm just trying to stop other people from falling into the same trap,' he explained.

“These people that are buying these [lottery] tickets, there's no warning anywhere...to say that you're going to lose your pension.

“If I'd known then what I know now, I would've given the win to my daughter and kept the pension for myself.”

Topics: Money, US News

Jess Battison

Jess is an Entertainment Journalist with a love of all things pop culture. Her main interests include keeping up with the Twitter girlies, waiting for a new series of The Traitors and losing her voice at a Beyoncé concert. She graduated with a first in Journalism from City, University of London in 2021 and has previously worked at MyLondon.

@jessbattison_