UK Lotto Winner Making the Case to Raise Legal Play Age
By Al Johnson // September 16, 2019
Winning the lottery is the long harbored dream of anyone on planet earth. Winning the lottery, despite the minuscule chances, is something that thousands of people attempt on a daily basis, hoping it will allow them to live the lavish lifestyle they dream of.
The dream came true for the one girl from Britain in 2003 when she was able to win the jackpot of one million, eight hundred and seventy thousand pounds.
The girl might have enjoyed it at the moment, but today, 16 years later, she has a lot to say about how the life of a lottery winner looks and how it might not be the best idea to give a young person as much money as a lottery can give them.
She tells her story, of how at the age of 16 winning the lottery resulted in some very unwise decisions, and how it might have been wider to not allow kids her age to play the lottery at all.
The troubles of being young and accidentally rich
When Callie Rogers first won the lottery, she was ecstatic and she knew exactly what she was going to do with the money. Well, sort of.
She knew that she was going to spend a significant chunk of the funds on having fun, enjoying life, giving expensive presents and so on.
She did just that, spending a significant chunk of the several million dollars she received on giving her friends presents, giving out loans of tens of thousands of pounds that she would never again see, and just mindlessly spending money left and right.
Today, at 32, the woman remains without a penny, but that is not the thing she is worried about.
The thing she thinks about the most is the fact that she was under too much stress when she had the money. She was only 16 at the time of winning, and she did not know how to handle it.
According to her, there is definitely a reason why gambling is not allowed until you’re 18 around the world. Why even receiving bonuses that are gambling-related is not allowed until you are 18, such as in the case of Australian deposit bonus offers or in casinos that are running promotions.
The youngsters do not know how to handle the risk, whether it is the risk of winning or losing.
They do not know how to handle the responsibility of holding so much money and how to stave off the constant need of the people around them to try their best at getting some money out of them, how to handle the stress of the sudden influx of people asking them for things, or even demanding things from them.
Which is why Mrs. Rogers is doing her best, at the moment, in order to help raise awareness of the issue and increase the gambling age within the country, and specifically the gambling age of the lottery, at least 18 years old.
Hers is not the only story
She is not the only one that faced issues after receiving a lottery victory such as she did. There are many reports of winners, both young and old, ending up spending all of their money rather quickly as a result of the victory.
There are dozens of victors all around the world, and all of them have managed to lose the money, one way or another. This goes to show that the issue of gambling is not just with age, but with the lack of knowledge of what to do with it.
Some of the stories are rather shocking. Like the story of Evelyn Adams. Adams won the lottery twice in her life, earning her around $5.6 million, combined.
But, while the celebrations were going on in Atlantic City, she realized that she messed up. She gambled all of the money away.
There are many stories like that, of either the people with large winnings losing a whole lot of money as a result of gambling, having fun or even, in some cases, resulting from the fact that they did not know how to manage it and gave it away, either to friends or relatives, as loans, help or otherwise plans.
A problem such as this deserves more attention than what the governments around the world have been giving to it.
The roots of the problem lie with two facts. One, is that extremely young people are allowed to participate in the lottery, which means that they are the kind of people who do not know what they are doing and end up not being able to care for themselves despite the money.
On the other hand, the lack of financial education is something that needs to be addressed. After all, while we might spend a lot of time talking about how in the frenzy of winning, people end up spending a lot, there is one common theme.
Those who end up winning the lottery, or at least a significant majority of them, end up without a penny within a decade.
The steady rate of spending and lack of investment is what causes this kind of issues for the winners. Financial education would be one of the best ways to assist lottery winners, and the general populace, in being better at having money.
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