School bus driver immediately retires after winning £80,000 lottery
A school bus driver has immediately resigned from his job after winning a lottery jackpot.
James Keown has been working for the Jefferson County Public Schools for more than a decade.
However, it seems like he will be relaxing for the foreseeable future.
He bought a ticket for the Kentucky Lottery Powerball and, incredibly, he had four white ball numbers match.
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That granted him an epic prize of $50,000.
But his luck wasn't over.
Keown managed to double his winnings with a Power Play.
“I looked at it four times… that number’s got to change, but it didn’t,” Keown said.
“I thought I better see what I won.
"The first time, I saw I won $50,000 and then I thought, wait a minute I play the multiplier all the time, so I went back, and the multiplier was two."
He wasted no time in sorting out his immediate future.
“I called my boss on Sunday, and I told him, ‘I hit the lottery and I’m not coming back’… I loved my job, but I’d been thinking about retiring for a while," he said.
His wife Monta says she's 'over the moon' for him and what it will mean for them.
Sadly due to taxes, James won't be walking away with the full $100,000.
His prize gets reduced down to $71,500 and he said he intends to use the money to support local cat rescue shelters.
They also want to buy a lake property and enjoy the rest of their days.
The Circle K store that sold James the winning ticket will also get to pocket a 1 per cent prize of $1,000.
But if you thought that price reduction from taxes was bad, wait until you hear how much the winner of the $1.08 billion jackpot in July.
The winning ticket was sold at the Las Palmitas Mini Market in Southern California and the winner had two options to choose from.
They could opt between receiving the total jackpot of $1.08 billion spread across 30 annual payments or the more popular option - taking a lump sum payment of $558.1 million.
When lottery winners choose the lump sum, they have to first face a mandatory federal tax withholding of 24 percent – so then they’re left with $424.15 million.
Plus, the amount could drop as low as $351.6 million dependent on the winner’s existing taxable income.
If the winner goes with the annual payments (working out at around $36 million), they could drop to $22.68 million with the 47 percent federal marginal rate.
Stewart Perrie