07 September 2023 , 18:50
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A newlywed couple spent their holiday at the beach and came home with a $1 million Powerball ticket.
April Royal and her husband Eric purchased their $2 Powerball tickets for the drawing on Saturday while at the beach for the Labor Day public holiday, according to lottery officials.
The pair didn't consider the ticket they had purchased until they had to stop on their way home on Monday to confirm the victory. “We’re still in shock,” April said. “And here I am, driving in all of Labor Day traffic.”
The Royals collected $712,501 after the necessary federal and state tax withholdings were taken out of their winnings on Tuesday at the lottery's Raleigh headquarters.
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The Royals collected $712,501 after the necessary federal and state tax withholdings were taken out of their winnings on Tuesday at the lottery's Raleigh headquarters (AFP via Getty Images)According to representatives of the North Carolina Education Lottery, the couple, from Fayetteville, North Carolina, intends to invest the money, pay off some debt, and take a honeymoon to celebrate their July wedding.
According to TIME, a widespread misperception about lottery winners is that the more money they win, the more likely it is that they will spend it all.
According to a commonly repeated but untrue narrative about lottery winners from the National Endowment for Financial Education, 70% of people who unexpectedly obtain a large sum of money lose it within a few years.
The National Endowment for Financial Education clarified in January 2018 that none of their studies supported that number.
In a lottery winner study that was co-authored by Dr. Daniel Cesarini and published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the researchers discovered that lottery winners who won greater sums of money up to $2 million really kept their wealth for more than a decade after the prize.
Contrary to popular opinion, there was no evidence that any of the participants were less pleased after winning at least $100,000 in the lottery (AFP via Getty Images)“We saw that people who won large sums of money were still wealthier 10 years after the fact, compared to people who won small sums of money,” Daniel said.
“Also, if you look at things like labour supply – the people who win large sums of money do cut down on work but it’s quite rare for them to quit altogether. They cut down mostly in the form of taking longer vacations.”
Contrary to popular opinion, there was no evidence that any of the participants were less pleased after winning at least $100,000 in the lottery. Researchers discovered that happiness and mental health for lottery winners did not alter considerably.
Overall, winning money produced long-term happiness, and researchers discovered a link between long-term happiness in other areas of life as well as financial happiness.
According to the study, "large-prize winners experience sustained increases in overall life satisfaction that persist for over ten years and show no evidence of waning over time."
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The Royals bought their ticket in a Circle K store in Southport, North Carolina.