How much would you have to win to give up work forever? Working Brits would need to win, on average, a sum of over £2 million before handing in their notice, our survey has found. The most popular amount was between £1 million and £2,499,999, while just under one in ten said that they would continue to work no matter how much they won.
We asked over 2,000 British adults working full- or part-time to choose how much money they would need to win (or receive in some other way) before giving up work entirely.
- 25% said the sum would need to be between £1,000,000 and £2,499,999, making this band the most popular of the ten options given
- 16% chose a little less than £1 million, deciding that their amount would have to be between £500,000 and £999,999
- 14% thought between £2,500,000 and £4,999,999 was a more realistic number
- 4% said that they’d need to win £10,000,000 before they would be prepared to give up work
- The average amount needed for Brits would be £2,064,137
- In total, 41% of respondents put their required figure at under £1,000,000, while 49% chose £1,000,000 or over
- And 8% said that they would continue to work no matter how much money they won
Chances to win
In the UK, the National Lottery runs several major, regular opportunities to win, of which the main draws are the EuroMillions (played all over Europe and costing £2 a ticket), the Lotto (the original draw), The Thunderball, which offers a jackpot prize of £500,000, and the Lotto Hot Picks, which offers substantial cash prizes for fewer numbers than a usual draw (tickets all costing £1).
The biggest jackpot ever won from one of these games in the United Kingdom was from a 2010 ticket for £113 million, and, happily for the winners, lottery payouts in the UK are tax-free and paid out in one lump sum, in contrast to prize-giving in other countries around the world.
You’d be lucky to scoop the full amount though, as the odds of winning the jackpot in the UK National Lottery simple weekly draw, involving all the main number balls, are approximately 1 in £14 million.
