Sometimes taking this fatherly advice will pay off big.
That was the case for an anonymous 38-year-old man from Wayne County, Michigan, who recently played the state's Lotto 47 game and walked away with a $7.19 million prize — after heeding some bold advice from his father.
“I've been playing Lotto 47 for a long time and I would always change my numbers,” the man told the Michigan Lottery. in a release. “One day, my dad told me I should pick a set of numbers and stick with them, so I did. I bought an online subscription and played the same set of numbers for several years.”
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On May 22, he played the same numbers in the game he was told to stand after buying a ticket online — 22-24-26-40-41-44.
To his disbelief, he received an email saying he had won.
“I was in total shock and immediately thought how right my father was,” the man said. “It still hasn't sunk in that I'm a millionaire!”
The anonymous player chose to take his payout as a lump sum, which came out to roughly $4.9 million after taxes, with plans to invest the “surreal” amount of money and put some toward college funds for his children.
According to the Michigan Lottery, the May 22 win was the largest prize ever won through the state's site, MichiganLottery.com.
Although this man publicly praised his father's strategy, not all lottery players have been so open with their family members about big wins.
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An anonymous man who won a $22 million jackpot told Dave Ramsey on “The Ramsey Show” last fall that he and his wife had never told his two children that he won.
“My wife and I made a conscious decision to keep it a secret,” the anonymous caller explained. “We haven't even told our two teenage kids. And I know this sounds weird, but we just don't want them to grow up to be waiters, you know, waiting for us to die so they can take our money. “