Winners or losers?

The National Lottery creates a millionaire every week in Britain. Maybe this turns you green with envy, but what is it actually like to wake up one day with more money than you can imagine?

Nearly all of us have fantasized about winning the big prize in The National Lottery. We dream about what we would do with the money, but we rarely stop to think about what the money would do to us.

For most of us, our way of life is closely linked to our economic circumstances. The different parts of our lives fit together like a jigsaw: work, home, friends, hobbies, and the local pub make our world. This is where we belong and where we feel at home. A sudden huge windfall would dramatically change it all and smash the jigsaw.

For example, most people like the idea of not having to work, but winners have found that without work there is no purpose to their day, and no reason to get up in the morning. It is tempting to move to a bigger house in a wealthy neighbourhood, but in so doing, you leave old friends and routines behind.

Winners are usually advised not to publicize their address and phone number, but charity requests and begging letters still arrive. If they are not careful, most of their money will be frittered away on lawyers’ fees to protect them from demanding relatives, guards to protect their homes and swimming pools, and psychotherapists to protect their sanity!

People who get it wrong
There are many stories about people who can’t learn how to be rich. In 1989, Val Johnson won £ 850,000 on the pools. Immediately, she went on a spending spree that lasted for four years and five marriages. She is now penniless and alone. ‘I’m not a happy person,’ she says. ‘Winning money was the most awful thing that happened to me.’

Then there is the story of Alice Hopper, who says that her £ 950,000 win four years ago brought her ‘nothing but misery’. She walked out of the factory where she worked, and left a goodbye note for her husband on the kitchen table. She bought herself a villa in Spain, and two bars (one a birthday present for her eighteen-year-old son). After three months, her son was killed while driving home from the bar on the motorbike which his mother had also bought for him. She found the bars more and more difficult to run. She now sings in a local Karaoke bar to earn money for groceries. ‘I wish I was still working in the factory,’ she says.

‘It won’t change us!’
That’s what all winners say when they talk to reporters and television cameras as they accept the cheque and the kisses from a famous film star. And some winners, like Malcolm Price, really mean it. He refused to change his way of life when he won £ 2.5 million. The next Saturday night, he went to his local pub as usual, and as usual, he didn’t buy his friends a drink. They were furious! He, too, is a lonely man now.

Imagine you are an average family and you have just won £ 1 million. At first it seems fantastic! Just by picking up the phone you can get the toilet seat fixed, and the leak in the roof repaired – all the problems that have been making your life miserable. ‘But it won’t change us, darling,’ you say to your wife. ‘Yes, it will!’ she insists. ‘ I want it to change us. It will make life better! It’ll be brilliant!’

Already, the children are changing. Just this morning they were ordinary, contented kids. Now they are demanding computer games, CD players, motorbikes ... ‘Hold on!’ you shout. ‘Let me answer the door.’

In the first week you receive two thousand letters advising you how to spend your money, either by investing it or giving it to good causes. Your son comes home with a music system that is bigger than the living-room, your sixteen-year-old daughter books a holiday to Barbados with her boyfriend, and your wife buys a Rolls-Royce. ‘But darling,’ you say, ‘we haven’t received one penny of this money yet! What about the broken toilet seat? What about the leaking roof? What about me?’ – I haven’t forgotten you,’ says your wife. ‘I’ve bought you a racehorse!’

The next day you get a begging letter from a man who won the lottery a year ago. He tells you how he spent £ 2,000,000 in three weeks. He says if you lent him some money, he could start his life all over again. You begin to think that winning a fortune brings more problems than it solves! You realize that you are quite fond of the broken toilet seat and the leaking roof after all.

from Headway New Intermediate p. 80/81