Couple Wins $1.9 Million Lottery After Playing Same Numbers For 22 Years
Two disability workers from Western Australia are preparing for retirement after taking home $1.9 million from the state's lotto pool.
The couple revealed they had considered changing their tried and true number selections for the first time in decades after failing to find success.
"We've been playing the same numbers for 22 years and we were thinking of retiring the numbers at the start of the year because we hadn't had much success," one of the winners said in a statement.
"We are so glad we didn't."
The win from January 29 was not the only big windfall for a WA resident in recent weeks.
A man from Midland won $1 million in Wednesday's draw making him one of three winners nationally.
Despite the joys of suddenly having excess dollar-doos in your pocket, a number of anecdotes about the 'curse of the lottery' abound.
Don McNay, a financial consultant to lottery winners and author of Life Lessons From The Lottery, told TIME that many winners end up unhappy or broke, citing marriage breakdowns, burning through the cash and even suicide.
"It's just upheaval that they're not ready for," he said. "It's the curse of the lottery because it made their lives worse instead of improving them."
Yet, an often cited statistic - that 70 per cent of people who quickly come into money will blow it within a few years - appears to not be true.
The National Endowment For Financial Education in the US said the statistic was not substantiated by any of its research.
Indeed New York University economics professor Dr Daniel Cesarini told TIME that a more recent study found people who won large sums of money were still wealthier a decade later.
"What we see consistently is that they work a little bit less, but they spend the money quite intelligently," he said.
"But that's not to say that nobody has wrestled with self-control problems and using the money in ways that are not conducive to their best interest. But, I think that their behaviour is a lot more governed than you might believe if you're reading popular accounts of what happens."
Research also found that people who won at least $100,000 did not have significant changes in their mental health and happiness.
Contrary to popular belief, researchers said there was no proof it made the study's participants less happy.
Vivienne Kelly