She had just £1.50 in her online lottery account, now Vicky Mitchell has won £10,000 every month for the next 30 years.
The mother-of-two from Halifax is not a regular lottery player, and would usually play in a shop, but earlier this summer she was rushing off to Skegness for a break and decided to play online.
The 42-year-old won £10 on the National Lottery’s Thunderball and reinvested it on other draws, winning £5 on Set For Life, the game that would soon change her life.
By the time she had spent almost all of the £5 on other draws, her online account balance was just £1.50, which so happens to be the cost of a line in the National Lottery’s Set For Life draw.
In customary fashion, Mitchell used that balance to buy a Set For Life lucky dip for the draw on Monday, August 12. Early on Tuesday morning she found out she’d landed the top prize, beating colossal odds of 15,339,390/1.
How Set For Life Lottery Prizes Breakdown
| No. of matches | Prize per winner |
|---|---|
| Match 5 + Life Ball | £10k every month for 30 years |
| Match 5 | £10k every month for 1 year |
| Match 4 + Life Ball | £250 |
| Match 4 | £50 |
| Match 3 + Life Ball | £30 |
| Match 3 | £20 |
| Match 2 + Life Ball | £10 |
| Match 2 | £5 |
What To Do With Such A Lottery Win
Mitchell got the top whack, her lucky dip throwing out 3, 20, 26, 27, 32 and the Life Ball 05, which the draw machine matched only hours later.
After trying to comprehend the words in the National Lottery email that followed, she and partner Adam began to dream about what to do with their lottery win.
“In a million years you never think you’ll win big but this is life changing,” Mitchell told the Yorkshire Post. “I was half asleep when I saw the email and thought ‘great it’s another fiver’. I couldn’t work it out and see what I had actually won. It said I had to log on.
“I woke up my partner, Adam, and shoved my phone in his face saying that I’d won the lottery.
“He said, ‘what a pound?’ and I just shouted ‘no, look, look, look’.
“It was still early so we then had an agonising wait to call The National Lottery line to get it all confirmed.”
They can also move out of their terraced house to somewhere with a bigger garden for their youngest son to play football in, and afford the luxury of a second car, and of course, some trips abroad.
“Adam and I share a car which means I sometimes end up on the bus. Just having my own car will be amazing,” she said. “I have always wanted to visit Budapest, as it is supposed to be very pretty, so a few city breaks will also go in the diary.”
While getting the equivalent of a £120,000 tax-free annual salary for the next 30 years is enough to tip most over the edge of sanity, Mitchell has said she does intend to keep working.
Has Anyone Else Won Set For Life?
Vicky Mitchell was the fifth winner of the National Lottery’s Set For Life top prize, but only the second to go public on her win.
After the inaugural draw on Monday, March 18, it took 19 draws before two Brits became the first to claim that top prize from the Thursday, May 21 event. They didn’t actually match the required five numbers and one Life Ball, but a ‘super chance’ rule meant that the prize went to players who matched five numbers, without the Life Ball – which they did.
The third winner came and went, then finally the fourth winner, who matched all numbers and that Life Ball on July 29, revealed himself in a heartwarming video made by the National Lottery.
The 24-year-old from Westmeath in Ireland was on a 15-minute break from his job at an Amazon factory when he checked the results on his phone to find he had won the jackpot worth £3.6million.
He was living in Peterborough with his sister Sarah, hoping to one day pursue his dream career in screenwriting, and help support his 23-year-old brother Robert, who has autism. As soon as the news was confirmed, he quit his job and started planning a family trip to Disneyland Paris.
He added: “I have always wanted to fulfil my dream to become a script writer and this now allows me the freedom to do it. I didn’t have to give it a second thought.”
Weymes numbers for that fateful Set For Life draw were 29 18 21 23 34 39 – Life Ball 03.
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First published on: Gambling.com
