You've won £1m - what do you do?

Although the reality is it would be barely be enough for many PHers to pay the balloon payment on their PCP.

Private education for the kids. I guess that would account for upto half of it.

Bigger house (or more precisely bigger garden and garage) and maybe a bolt-hole in the Alps.

Job done, £1m spent.

Well that’s a bit annoying. Prefer house came up at 1.2m a couple of months ago, but I couldn’t justify the current mortgage payments. I’d have had that.

Now, I’d sit on it for a bit and wait for another option to come up.

I do that anyway, I also run the bike and the lawnmower on 99RON

At 52 I'd have two options with £1m...

Retire having invested it and maintaining my lifestyle pretty much as is.

Or

Keep working, sell my current place buying a place just up the road and doing it up just how I'd want it, probably £400k

Something completely OTT car wise so another £350k for a McLaren or Aston Martin

Invest the rest and retire in about ten years.

Clear the mortgage and my wife and I would retire.

Wouldn't tell anyone.

Don't think we'd change much else really, lifestyle wise.

£250K to pay off the mortgage
£100K for upgrades to the house and garden
£100K total on a used but newish fast estate car, a used Caterham or similar & a new bike.
£25K on a holiday
£25K to my sister as a deposit for her first house.

The other £500K I'd stick in a mix of pensions/investments & carry on as normal.

Not close enough to retirement by a long stretch that £500K would allow me to give up work, but no mortgage payments would give me a lot more disposable income to spend on other stuff in the future.

I admire some people's ability to invest most or all of the lump sum and just live off the interest from it. Of course we are all different, with different financial situations and expectations, different ages and therefore different life spans still to plan for etc.

If you find yourself in this situation then you should definitely seek some professional financial advice as to how to invest it to achieve the result you're after. In simple terms, if you're living off the interest then you're not compounding and your lump sum isn't growing. Your income will be entirely dependent on the wider economy, and if we enter another period of low interest rates and low growth then your income could drop considerably. You might get £50k this year but only £20k next year, and don't forget it's taxable income. A good financial advisor should be able to get your investment spread around to mitigate this.

If you're planning to do this long term, but at some point in the future decide to spend some of the money, say on a bigger house, then your million pounds will definitely be worth less than it is now. Just look at inflation calculators and house price growth over 10/20/30 year periods. And then having spent some of the lump sum your income from the remainder will thereafter be reduced.

Of course, unless you're already a multimillionaire, then a £1m windfall will be life-changing in some way, but it will not buy you a millionaire lifestyle. At best it will allow you to live a very average lifestyle without having to work for it. If you make it work for you enough to give up your job then you'll have a lot of free time, but not enough income to have endless holidays or expensive hobbies to fill that time. If that's all you want from life then great, but it would seem a missed opportunity for me. As I said, we're all different.

M3 touring. 75k
Mini for the mrs. 25k
Ns and I 300k for a couple of years.
Global fund 150k
Isas 40k
New kitchen and garage spruce up 40k
New drive way 5k
Holidays. 50k
Bal on easy access initially.

Keep working for another 2 years.pay 100pc of those wages into existing pension.

1mill would see me feet up at 55. Rather than 59/60.

Same here mate.

That'll do me as it's a bit more than I earn now and I could tell work to fek off