£108 million lottery winner said it was a struggle to adjust to having so much money
Published
| Last updated
A bloke who won £108 million on the lottery has explained that it was a real struggle adjusting to having that much money.
Loading…
Back in 2014, Neil Trotter felt like the luckiest man on Earth as he won the lottery and bagged himself an incredible cash prize.
At first his main concern was everyone doing the Only Fools and Horses joke that with a name like Trotter he was bound to have become a millionaire at some point, but pretty soon the enormity of the situation started to weigh on him.
Quitting his job as a car mechanic, he was ready to life a life of fortune and luxury, hoping to maybe land a guest driving spot at the British Touring Car Championships.
However, he found it difficult to adjust to his new lifestyle and struggled to settle into his life newfound wealth, while he also felt he had to go public with his winnings.
He said: "Going from having to work to not having to work any more was quite a strange thing to adjust to, I soon found out that sitting at home watching telly all day was quite boring.
"If you want to live the dream, which is to have the house, the money and spend it you've got to go public. People have said in the past they'd hide the money."
"We get other winners that can help us and talk to us.
Neil explained that one of the best pieces of advice he got was from the Camelot group which runs the National Lottery, that was 'don't do anything straight away'.
Luckily for Neil he was able to get himself into a position where he could be 'living the dream', which is something that ultimately eludes many lottery winners.
While loads of people who dream of winning the lottery would love to win a windfall as massive as Neil's, the past record of winners suggests he's got a real point about the problems that come with the winnings.
Many lottery winners end up losing all of their money and going broke, blowing through millions in just a few years and ending up right back where they started.
When Michael Carroll won £9.7 million back in 2002 on his first ever go playing the lottery he was dubbed the 'Lotto lout' by the papers.
By 2010 he'd lost all of his winnings and reapplied for his old job as a binman, and he's by no means the only lottery winner to lose it all.
Getting that much money can also put a real strain on your relationships with those around you, as a couple who won the 'set for life' draw and started bringing in £10k a month for 30 years discovered.
Meanwhile, a woman who won the Euromillions jackpot aged 17 looked back on it almost a decade later and said it made her 'miserable'.
Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock/Shutterstock
Topics: National Lottery, Money, UK News
