In 1961, Vivian Nicholson worked in a licorice factory in England. Her husband was a miner. Between them, they made 9 pounds a week. After a series of lucky bets on soccer games, they won today’s equivalent of 4.5 million dollars.
Thus began, according to her New York Times obituary, “a cautionary fable worthy of Aesop: Mr. Nicholson was killed a few years later at the wheel of the powder-blue Jaguar he had bought with the prize money; Mrs. Nicholson wound up nearly destitute.”
Decades after winning the money – during which Mrs. Nicholson lost not only her fortune, but her friends, and subsequent husbands – she reflected back on the days before her big win:
Before that, Keith and I used to have five cigarettes to last us all week. So he would have a drag and then give it to me and I would have a drag, and I’d not eat much at dinner because we couldn’t afford it. Sharing cigarettes, just holding one another and loving one another. That was when I had everything.
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Andrew “Jack” Whittaker Jr. was a millionaire before he even won the lottery, having built his wealth through hard work. Then, one Christmas Day, he won the lottery. Two years later, the Washington Post published this profile: “He Won Powerball’s $314 Million Jackpot. It Ruined His Life.”
When he died in June, his AP obituary recounted the misery that followed:
[H]e quickly fell victim to scandals, lawsuits and personal setbacks as he endured constant requests for money, leaving him unable to trust others. Several times, he was quoted as saying he wished he had torn up the ticket.
His wife left him. A friend of his drug-addicted granddaughter was found dead at his home in 2004. Three months later, his 17-year-old granddaughter was gone, too. His daughter, Ginger Whittaker Bragg, died in 2009 at age 42 after struggling for years with cancer. And in 2016, he lost a Virginia home to a fire.
It is a truism that money can’t buy happiness. There’s also a popular conception that winning the lottery doesn’t increase happiness. That’s debatable, however: this recent analysis of lottery winners finds “having more money makes people less stressed and more satisfied with their life.”
Still, as Aesop concluded in The Tortoise and the Eagle: “If men had all they wished, they would be often ruined.”