The UK’s youngest ever EuroMillions winner Jane Park has revealed her biggest regret since winning £1,000,000 back in 2013.
Park, who recently argued that winning the lottery should come with a government warning, revealed her biggest purchase regret, as well as admitting that she wishes she'd never gone public about her win, and discussing some of the positives to come from her unexpected windfall.
Whilst she’s spoken extensively about how winning the lottery hasn’t exactly been a bed of roses for her – like most people might imagine – her biggest regret is a botched surgery that she purchased with her winnings.
She told LADbible: “The only purchase I regret is my first Brazilian Bum Lift.
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“I was left in absolute agony and hospitalised for four weeks with suspected sepsis."
In the end, Jane did manage to get the whole thing sorted out with another surgery to fix the damage of the first one, but the BBL isn’t the only regret that Park admits to since winning the lottery.
For Park, going public with her win in the first place was a big regret.
She explained: “I do regret going public.
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“Yes it was my choice, but I was just seventeen and it happened so quickly.
“I thought I had won on the Sunday, but I had to wait until Monday morning to call Camelot and find out for sure.
“I found out on Monday, was persuaded to do publicity without thinking of the negative impacts it would have and within 48 hours I had a photographer and publicity team in front of me.
“I feel like there should be at least a 14-day period for winners to truly decide what they want to do, rather than make a decision whilst you’re still coming to terms with the fact you’ve become a millionaire.
“I didn’t want to have a public profile, as such, but I have given interviews publicly to raise awareness.
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“A lot of people think that the solution to my problems is simply to give all the money away to charity, but at some point I would like to have a family and how could I knowingly give it all away when it could help my children with their education and start in life later in the future?”
Now Park is hopeful of getting the government to rethink the rules on the lottery.
They’ve already raised the minimum ages to 18 from 16, but Park wants further action to stop others repeating some of the worst parts of her win.
She continued: “I’m really proud that by speaking publicly about wanting the age limit increased, the lottery was finally increased to 18 after 28 years of it being just 16.
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“Now I would like to see a ban on publicity for anyone under the age of 21.
“I made the mistake of going public and there’s a lot of reasons for that, but I honestly think most people under the age of 21 wouldn’t fully understand what they are letting themselves in for.
“Every time I speak out, I get online abuse, but I hold my hands up that talking publicly was a mistake.
“Now I only talk publicly to help other people not make the mistakes I did.
“It’s not complaining, it’s trying to raise awareness.”
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However, her win hasn’t all been bad news.
Through winning the lottery, Park has learned a great deal, and managed to make herself financially savvy and safe.
She said: “The one thing I'm grateful for about winning the lottery is learning about how money works.
“It's something that I would never have studied at university or anything like that.
“On Instagram people see me having a wild time in Dubai or some other random country, but when I'm in the UK I spend a lot of time sat in peoples offices such as accountants and financial advisors.
“They literally tell me ‘Jane, it's time to sell this house as you'll make more by doing this’ or other times it might be ‘Jane, let's put your money in this account but you can't touch it for the next five years’.
“I find that side of my life really interesting, but I don't share it on social media because for most people it’s really boring.”
Tom Wood