With EuroMillions in the spotlight following today’s announcement of the latest jackpot winners, speculation grows as to what the winning couple will do with their windfall.
With EuroMillions in the spotlight following today’s announcement of the latest jackpot winners, speculation grows as to what the winning couple will do with their windfall.
Duncan MacIntyre, Head of Coutts Private Office comments, ‘The best advice we can possibly give to this week’s lucky EuroMillions winner is to sit back, take stock and experience what it feels like to be the owner of £148.6 million. Don’t be tempted to make any large purchases, or to promise money away, even to close family or friends. This is huge sum of money, and it is important that the winner gets the right advisers on board to ensure that they make the best decisions about keeping the money for the long-term.
‘Having advised and continuing to hold relationships with many winners of such windfalls, it is clear that not only will these sums of money change the lives of the winners but also those of their children, grandchildren and beyond. In our experience of working with lottery winners, philanthropy can provide a great sense of personal reward through making a difference to the causes and communities they care about whilst also playing a role in long term wealth planning.’
Philanthropy Statistics:
If the winners were to donate two thirds of their winnings, this would be nearly equal to the total raised through the tremendous work of the Comic Relief team in 2011, which stood at £108m
Coutts Million Pound Donors Report reported in 2009/10 that a total of £782m was given to UK based charities by individual donors whose gifts were £1m or more. If the winners donated all of their winnings to charity, it would represent around 20% of this total
Coutts Million Pound Donors Report also reported that the average gift made by individual donors to a charitable foundation in 2011 in the UK was £22.8m – the jackpot would cover this more than 6.5 times.
What does £148.6m look like?
The winning amount, if laid end to end in £50 notes, would stretch for approximately 288 miles – the equivalent to 1,158 laps of the Olympic Stadium
If the winning amount was stacked in a pile it would be approximately 297 metres tall – two and a half times the height of the Olympic Orbit
It would take a Coutts cashier approximately 18 1/2 days without any sleep to count the winnings by hand – much longer than the London Olympics themselves
Read more from this and previous Wealth Wednesdays