What would you do if you won the lottery? Would you buy your mom her dream home? Make a donation to your favourite charity? Quit your job and follow your dreams? Tell us on the Tell Us page! While I’m sure we’d all do some Good. if we won the lottery keep reading to see how a do-gooder couple from Nova Scotia spent their winnings.
There’s no towering mansion, fancy sports cars or exotic stamps on their passport, but a Nova Scotia couple burned through most of their $11 million in lottery winnings in less than four months.
Violet and Allen Large, of Lower Truro, N.S., used the $11.2 million they won in July to help the people and groups closest to them and haven’t spent a dime on themselves.
“We didn’t know what we were going to do (at first),” said Violet Large, 78. “After we got it, we wrote down all the family names and then all the charities. We had two pages and we kept adding and adding.
“We must have given away 90 per cent.”
Violet, who was recently diagnosed with cancer, just finished her final chemotherapy treatment last week. She said the couple will explore what to do with the relatively small amount they kept once she regains her strength following a surgery and six treatments.
The couple returned to Nova Scotia to retire in the 1980s after spending much of their working lives in Ontario.She said because of responsible planning during that time, the added security of keeping the $11 million themselves wasn’t necessary, noting among the larger donations was about $200,000 to a local hospital.
“My health isn’t good and we’re not very young,” she said. “We’re very happy the way we are.”
After family, which Violet said were taken care of before anything else, the couple focused on giving to hospitals, schools, churches and fire departments.
Violet and her 75-year-old husband said the internal reward for assisting other people is far better than using the money themselves.
“We haven’t spent one cent on ourselves because we’ve been too busy getting everything looked after and with my health, I have to wait to get my health back to get the energy to do anything. We’re not travellers anyway. We live in the country and we’re proud of it. Money can’t buy you health or happiness.”
Read the full article from the Calgary Herald here: http://bit.ly/djPz90
Do Good, Feel Good, Live Good,
-Team thinkGood.
Tags: Calgary Herald, Couple, Give money to charities, Nova Scotia, Win lottery