We have all fantasized about what we would do with lottery money before. Maybe we would spend it on a nicer car, give it to family, or finally buy a mansion.
But would you ever give away most of that money?
This woman in the UK did!Frances Connolly, 55, won the EuroMillions lottery in 2019. The former social worker from Northern Ireland had won about £115 million, or $145 million.
Amazingly, Frances already had a list prepared for how to share some of her possible winnings with family and friends.
Other than sharing her money with those close to her, she has also found ways to give the money to those in need. In fact, she has already contributed more than half of the total amount to these places.
Connolly set up one charity in Northern Ireland after his late mother, Kathleen Graham. She began a second one as well, PFC Trust, which supports local carers, the elderly, and refugees in her hometown. Connolly also spent £5,000 to buy clothes and toiletries for Ukrainian refugees.
She even had to hide how much she had given away from her husband.
Connolly is not new to charity, however. She volunteered with St. John Ambulance as a child and worked at an AIDS hotline charity while studying in Belfast.
“If I had any advice for a winner… I’d say money liberates you to be the person that you want to be,” she told the BBC.
When a local news outlet asked Connolly if she was happy with her decision to gift her money, she said: “Why wouldn’t you? I’ve done that all my life.”
Even with their generosity, Connolly and her husband have used some of the money on themselves as well. Together, they bought a six-bedroom house in County Durham with seven acres of land and a second-hand Aston Martin.
Living fully in luxury is not something that Frances approves of. Recalling a show that included two people spending £25,000 on a bottle of champagne, she spoke about how money like that could have been used to help those in need.
Frances continues to run the foundations she founded, while her husband continues to run their plastics business.
“If you can do good things for deserving people, why wouldn’t you just do it?” she told Mirror UK. “It makes no sense to me to have that kind of money and not use it to do good in the world.”
What do you think of Frances’s decision to give away so much of her lottery fortune? Do you think you would be able to do the same?
