South Africa has another fortunate Powerball jackpot winner. This time, it’s a 72-year-old person from KwaZulu-Natal, who has pocketed R100 million.
The pensioner played the Powerball for more than a decade before eventually winning the fat prize. That’s a serious investment of time and just goes to show that good things can come to those who wait.
“I was hoping to catch a big fish and instead caught a whale. I had been playing for almost 14 years now, every Tuesday and Friday. The most I would win was between R30 to R60,” said the lucky winner, who retired relatively shortly after turning 50 years old. He was an engineer during his professional career. Where this newfound wealth might lead his personal life remains in the balance.
Wisely, the winner is eager to chat to his private banker for some sound financial advice about what to do with the money and where, potentially, to invest most of it.
There are some interesting digits behind the composition of how – and even why – people invest lottery winnings in certain ways.
According to a 2019 interview with a Warren Ingram, who was a personal financial advisor and executive director at Galileo Capital at the time, 80 percent of lottery winners give money to family, more specifically brothers and sisters. This could be because many South Africans have a deep reverence and respect for their siblings.
Ingram also revealed 20 percent of winners go overseas for the first time. Travel is more limited now than it has been in the past, so that percentage might drop, but it’s a relevant point among travel-hungry citizens from, say, landlocked Calitzdorp looking to travel to, by example, cheery Christchurch in New Zealand.
Further investment trends can be seen in data that reveals 75 percent of winners buy a home in South Africa. Approximately 25 percent, meanwhile, purchase a home in a different country. This also largely goes to show how much South Africans value their abodes and the effective physical and mental security it gives them. It’s not difficult to understand why a new or secondary home is among the first fresh purchase of jackpot winners.
It’s also on record that around three percent of winners then enrol their child or children into private schools. That’s a smaller percentage compared to others in this article but a significant percentage nonetheless. It speaks of the great pride South African parents tend to take in the education of their offspring. Private schools in the country certainly don’t come cheap and they can bring several advantages.
What all of this also does is raise questions around whether unexpected winnings should be invested locally or abroad. Many differ on the subject but loyalty ties and hope in the homegrown could play a big role in the decision-making around this. It’s good to diversify a financial portfolio, of sorts, with a balance abroad and locally. It can very much depend on the time of the year the investment might be made, too.
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