Madonna King: What would you do if you won $100m?

Would newfound wealth set you up or eventually tear your family apart?

What would you do if you won big on gold lotto, Madonna King asks. Picture: Contributed

What would happen if you won $100 million today?

Give up work? Buy your children their own homes? Donate half to charity? Travel the world with loved ones for as long as life allows?

One woman in the riverside Brisbane suburb of Hawthorne has had the enviable task of navigating those questions - and ended up living life pretty much the way she always has.

Let’s call her Kate, because she remains anonymous; a delicious irony in a world that celebrates big wins, big losses, and not much in-between.

You might remember the headlines last February. The unregistered winner was getting ready for a gym workout at 6am one Friday morning, when she checked her $200 million Powerball draw ticket - and found out life would never be the same.

Almost 10 million tickets were sold and she shared the jackpot with a New South Wales couple, walking away with $100 million.

“I started to pace the floor back and forth and question if it was even real,’’ Kate said at the time. “I didn’t know who to call or what to say. I was slapping my face and telling myself to wake up!

“I immediately hopped into my car, held onto the ticket for dear life and called my dad for some advice.’’

Now, almost 18 months on, Kate is still Kate - and her life overhaul seems to be overwhelmingly temperate.

“On a day-to-day basis, not a huge amount has changed. I still get up for the 6am gym session and the dog still needs to be walked and fed,” she told locals recently.

Of course, a few longer-term visions have been filled out. She has bought a home near the ocean, but is focused more on creating “lifelong memories’’ with family and friends. And giving back to her local community.

“Each day we are deeply grateful for that life-changing moment,’’ she told Hawthorne News. “I will always be thankful to Dad for answering my early morning call.’’

She didn’t elaborate on her father’s advice, but we can surmise that he told her to take a death breath, forget the gym for one day, and to not flaunt her newfound wealth.

She hasn’t, staying both anonymous and grounded, and assiduously eschewing a flashier lifestyle.

It’s the advice we’d hope all our children would take.

I’ve never fallen for the ‘money doesn’t buy happiness line’. Sure, it doesn’t underwrite bliss and beatitudes, but in a world where people are bedding down in cars or parks overnight, and we continue to search for a cancer cure, it can certainly grow optimism.

As a young journalist, 20 years ago or more, I remember a story of a family from Sydney torn apart by a mighty and lucky win; beating the ‘Joneses’ next door prompted family fallouts and eventual bankruptcy.

Sunday Mail columnist Madonna King. Picture David Clark

But that, it seems, is the exception to the rule. Forbes Magazine, a couple of years ago, went searching for evidence and found two studies pointing to the joy delivered by unexpected windfalls.

One, a 2019 study by researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Zurich, used a German household survey which specifically asked respondents whether they had recently won a lottery.

More than 600 households had won a “substantial amount’’ during the study period, ranging from thousands to millions of Euros. And the data pointed to an improved sense of overall life satisfaction - and the more won, the more positive the effect.

This was backed up by a second study in 2020 by researchers from Stockholm University, Stockholm School of Economics and New York University. It focused on 3000 Swedish lottery winners, and their “psychological well-being between five and 22 years after they won the lottery’’.

And bingo. Researchers again found a sustained increase in life satisfaction, that remained a decade after the windfall, and showed no evidence of dissipating.

Winners didn’t spend up big. Nor did they quit their jobs, but many worked slightly less, which allowed for more leisure time.

Kate is one of Australia’s biggest-ever winners, but she hasn’t let it define her. The gym still calls at 6am, and the dog still needs to be walked.

In the din that celebrates the brassy and the bold, there’s a lesson for us all.

And it might even start with buying a lottery ticket, today.

Originally published as Madonna King: What would you do if you won $100m?