Lotto Powerball: How could $5m change the life of a Northlander?

Nearly 50,000 tickets from a total of 1.26 million nationwide sold for last Wednesday's $33.5m Lotto draw were bought in Northland. Photo / NZME

As Wednesday night’s $5 million Lotto draw attracts punters to the shops, we ask ourselves whether it is truly a life-changing amount of money.

Absolutely it is, says Infometrics chief executive and principal economist Brad Olsen.

“If you’re Jeff Bezos or something then no, no it’s not but there aren’t many of them.”

Forbes magazine’s real-time billionaire ranking list as of Tuesday showed the Amazon founder was the third wealthiest person in the world, his $114 billion fortunate overshadowed by controversial tech billionaire Elon Musk, $180b, and French businessman Bernard Arnault, whose fortune is a whopping $211b.

“But when we’re talking about the average person then yes $5m is a big change,” Olsen said.

He explained how if you considered the general cost of a house in Northland you could buy one for every working day of the week.

Or you could shell out nearly all of it to buy just over 65 hectares of coastal paradise in Kerikeri - one of the highest-valued properties currently on the market in Northland.

“I think most people have some sort of idea of what they’d like to do with a big Lotto win,” Olsen said.

In the case of Wednesday’s potential winnings, do you take $500,000 to play with because of the excitement of becoming a multi-millionaire and put the rest in the bank to gain interest or do you invest it? Put the rest into a house?

“There are quite a few options and the best option there is generally you want to spread that risk around and understand what you want the money to do for you,” Olsen advised.

But your $5m win could be life-changing for others.

“It certainly gives you more opportunity and choice to possibly help your kids and possibly help them earlier as well.”

Although Olsen felt Lotto winners sometimes spoke about people who they thought were their friends turning on them when they didn’t get a piece of the pie.

“You just have to be very careful with it ... setting some principles or some parameters around what you want those windfalls to provide is important.”

There’s no denying many of us pine for that lucky payday. In fact, there were 1.26 million ticket holders in last Wednesday’s $33.5m Lotto draw - almost 50,000 of whom were in Northland.

A spokesperson for Lotto said while they couldn’t say how those sales compared with previous weeks, they do know that when the jackpot climbs demand for tickets increases across all regions.

But why?

Olsen said it all goes back to the age-old question of: does more money make you happier?

“Some people say yes, some people say no. What does seem to be true, is it certainly provides you with more options and opportunities so that you can sort of change not only your circumstances but other people’s too.”

He boiled it down to people simply thinking, I could really use that.

“It’s everyone’s dream to win Lotto but I think, given the odds, it has to be a pipe dream ... no one has a strategy on how to win that but I think as exciting as it is, it’s certainly not economic reality it will all of a sudden magically change lives.”