Grandmother wins $9m lake house after ignoring husband’s warning
Hours before there was a knock at their front door, Nicola Dickinson and her husband Martyn were at home discussing their household budget.
It was earlier this month when the married couple of almost 40 years were chatting about their post-Christmas credit card bill and potential ways to cut costs going into the new year.
Then, Nicola’s phone rang. The voice on the other end told her she’d won a raffle.
She didn’t believe the caller, ending the call before telling Martyn she’d “won something”.
Her phone rang a second time, it was a representative from Omaze UK, a charity-based raffle letting Nicole know they were outside her house.
A short time later she was handed the keys to a five-bedroom lake house worth £4,500,000 ($9 million) plus £250,000 ($500,000) in cash.
Nicola bought the winning ticket in the Omaze Million Pound House Draw for $50.
“I’ve never won anything in my life,” she said in a video for Omaze UK.
“That morning we’d been talking about downsizing and cutting costs and now we’ve upsized.”
She had entered the competition for about four years, despite her husband suggesting she wouldn’t win in “a million years”.
“He’s been moaning about me entering for four years. I’m really glad I don’t listen to him,” she said.
“And I’m really glad you don’t listen to me as well,” Martyn chimed in.
Nicola told The Sun she is unsure what she plans to do next – keep the house or not.
She said the cash will mean if she does keep the house she and Martyn can afford to run it for many years.
“If we decide not to live at the house full-time, we’ve got fantastic choices – we can rent it out for extra income or sell it after a while and bank the cash – having that flexibility is just wonderful,” she told the media outlet.
The lake house is on Lake Windermere in the south-eastern part of the Lake District in North West England.
Nicola and Martyn have lived in the same house for the past 30 years.
They have three adult children and three grandchildren.
“This win has taken so much pressure off us financially. It gives us security, stability and peace of mind in a way we’d never even dreamed of.”
Launched in the UK in 2020, the Omaze Million Pound House Draw has raised over £100,000,000 for UK charities and turned winners into multi-millionaires in the process.
This isn’t the first time a raffle has given a family a leg up onto the property ladder.
Last year, Lucy* an Australian grandmother won two luxury beachfront apartments worth more than $6 million.
Meanwhile, Kathleen Spangler, a mother and US Marine Corps officer, won a cottage in Ireland after spending $19.50 on tickets.
*Name changed to protect identity.
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