How would you feel if you found out you won $40,000 on the lottery? Pretty great right? Think of all the things you could do with a quick injection of $40,000. You could buy a new car, pay down bills, treat yourself to a really nice vacation, go to an elite private college for one year… I don't care who you are, $40,000 out of nowhere would be an awesome surprise. Now imagine how you would feel if you found out that the $40,000 lottery ticket was actually $40 million!!!??? This is exactly what happened to a grandmother in Canada earlier this week.
\$40 Million Lotto WinnerMaria Carreiro is a 51 year old grandmother who lives in Toronto Canada who plays the lottery every week. Like most people, Maria hadn't ever won anything significant from playing the lottery. Nothing more than $5-10 in prizes. So you can imagine how great she felt last week when she was under the impression that her most recent ticket was a $40,000 winner. Maria was on cloud nine for almost an entire day, thinking she had won $40k. It wasn't until her skeptical daughter went online to check if the ticket was really a winner or if Maria had just read something wrong. Turns out not only did the daughter discover that the ticket was genuine, she also discovered that the ticket was worth not $40,000, but $40,000,000! Big difference. Maria immediately rushed to the store to verify with an official machine and she too discovered that she was now a certifiable multi-millionaire.
Maria is an immigrant from Portugal who moved to Canada with basically nothing then worked in a factory for many years. Her husband, also a factory worker, quit his job first thing Monday morning. The millionaire couple now plans on taking a vacation to Hawaii to make up for the fact that they never had a honeymoon 30 years earlier, because they couldn't afford it. And in the short term, Maria is taking all of her friends and family to their favorite all you can eat Chinese buffet!
What's the first thing you would do with $40 million!?
