Sometimes taking that fatherly advice will pay off big time.
This was the case for one anonymous 38-year-old man from Wayne County, Michigan, who recently played the state’s Lotto 47 game and walked away with a $7.19 million prize — after heeding some bold advice from his dad.
“I have been playing Lotto 47 for a long time, and would always switch up my numbers,” the man told the Michigan Lottery, in a release. “One day, my dad told me I should pick a set of numbers and stick with them, so that’s what I did. I purchased an online subscription and have been playing the same set of numbers for a few years.”
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On May 22, he played the same numbers in the game that he had been told to stick to after purchasing a ticket online — 22-24-26-40-41-44.
To his disbelief, he received an email saying that he had won.
“I was in total shock and instantly thought how my dad had been right,” the man said. “It still hasn’t sunk in that I’m a millionaire!”
The anonymous player chose to receive his payout as a lump sum, which came out to roughly $4.9 million after taxes, with plans to invest the “surreal” amount of money and put some away in college funds for his children.
According to the Michigan Lottery, the May 22 win was the largest prize ever won through the state’s site, MichiganLottery.com.
Though this man publicly praised his dad’s strategy, not all lottery players have been as open with their family members about big wins.
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An anonymous man who won a $22 million jackpot told Dave Ramsey on “The Ramsey Show” last fall that he and his wife never told his two children that he won.
“My wife and I made a conscious decision to just kind of keep it under wraps,” the anonymous caller explained. “We haven’t even told our two teenage children. And I know that sounds strange but we just don’t want them to grow up to be waiters, you know, waiting for us to die so they can get our money.”