‘Hurtling up the highway in a canary yellow lamborghini’: Max Futcher on winning millions

I’d maybe start with a $20 million beach mansion and a car ... I’m plotting how to spend my millions.

28/06/1996. $8,000,000 in cash. Money. Dollars. Notes. Currency. Banks. Hands. $20. $10. Piles.

Giving one person $150m in a lump sum lotto win is wrong, and not just because that person isn’t me.

The fellow from Adelaide who won the whole lot this year claimed he’d still show up to work, but I wonder, a few weeks later, how his life has changed.

These mega jackpots are becoming more common, and despite the minuscule chance of us winning division one, a massive number of us still buy that ticket.

Analysts at Citi say the Lottery Corporation now has such a big pot of cash that mega jackpots will become more common. It’s a ticket to dream, so what fills your dreams? How would you spend $150m? (Of course, at this point I should stress, I don’t endorse gambling, so at least gamble responsibly, if you must).

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Maybe you’d start with a $20m beach mansion, and maybe a $10m bolthole in the city. Set aside $2m to furnish those two houses. Then spend $800,000 on a couple of Porsches to drive between them. How about a $5m yacht? And you simply must take a first-class holiday for, I don’t know, $300,000?

By now guilt will be setting in, so let’s give some away. How about splashing $10m on friends and family, and another $10m on your chosen charities? Imagine the difference you could make in people’s lives. You could pay off mortgages or donate to cancer research and help the homeless. Now you feel better about yourself, let’s keep spending.

If your luxury global jaunt gave you the travel bug, why don’t you spoil yourself with a private jet? A Cessna M2 is a bargain at around $5m (but we’d better set aside a million a year for the pilot and ongoing costs). On a whim, you could fly off to the South Pacific, like that 1970s Imperial Leather soap ad where the family is in a bath on a plane. “Tahiti looks nice.”

Indeed.

Okay, how are we going? So far, we’ve spent about $63m. That leaves $87m. Wow, and I thought I was being extravagant! Even if you left that cash in a savings account at 4 per cent, you’d be earning $3.5m a year. After tax, you’re still swimming in more than $1.8m a year. That’s 35 grand a week before you even touch the principal.

Really, there is no “off” switch, so it’d be time to party. My parties would become the stuff of legend, and constant neighbourhood complaints. I would invite the famous and truly influential.

I would be incredibly popular, with so many new friends, but would they really be my friends?

How much money is too much to win?

Some would circle like sharks, plotting to suck away this fool’s fortune, and I might develop a sense of intense paranoia.

Would I be able to tell who my friends were any more? Would family and friends keep returning with their hands out for more money? I might become a human ATM.

One of my mates has a saying about acquiring sudden wealth. He says, “Don’t change your friends, and don’t change your clothes.” Fair enough, but that advice might fly out the cockpit window when you’re spraying millions like confetti.

For a lot of us, a sudden injection of such wealth could prove dangerous. Some would be at risk of perishing in a blizzard of indulgence, like drowning in a bath of Champagne.

Channel 7's Max Futcher. Picture: Tara Croser.

Not me. Flamboyance would be my biggest danger. How long would it take before I became accustomed to the trappings of this wealth?

Perhaps, within a year you’d see me hurtling up the highway in a canary yellow Lamborghini, dressed in a fur coat and top hat, with my pet chimpanzee riding shotgun. I would name him Barry.

Okay, okay I’ve been thinking about this too much, but my point is, $150m is too much money all at once.

I propose a ceiling for lotto prizes of $50m. I doubt anyone would have complained last month if the jackpot was three draws for $50m instead of one mega jackpot of $150m. It would increase your chances of winning and increase your chances of surviving longer than a year.

And besides, it’s still ample cash for a top hat and a pet chimp.