Meet Emma Cox, 28, and Luke Pittard, 23. These guys live in South Wales with their respective parents and they both work in the Pontprennau branch of McDonalds. In fact Emma has worked there for 10 years and has worked up to area manager for 16,000 a year. Luke meanwhile is a staff trainer on 12,000 a year. They both met four years ago at the drive-thru Maccys’ in Cardiff and have a daughter Chloe, two.
On Wednesday they won the lottery and picked up the 1.3m prize. After the obvious excitement they sat down and decided that they’d spend some of the win on a “nice-sized” house together. Very wise.
Then they went a bit mad.
For some reason they decided that they weren’t going to give up their jobs. Emma, who lives in somewhere called “Splott” and Luke say, “We’re loving it. They treat us really well at McDonalds”. In fact, they even popped in to a nearby McDonald’s yesterday for a Big Mac and chips before collecting the cheque for 1,369,847 they won in last Wednesday’s Lotto draw.
I think it’s fair to say at this point that these guys aren’t the sharpest tools in the box. I mean yes, the idea of working in order to grounded is all well and good however your work mates will soon be treating you a little differently and I doubt things would be the same after being in the paper.
Let me explain it to you another way….
Let’s forget about the house for a minute and do some mathematics. They’ve got a cheque for 1,369,847 there. If you go into .. say.. Halifax and open up a High Interest Current Account you can get 5.12% interest. It’s a normal account – you get a debit card and all that jazz. So let’s work out just how much interest you’d be getting (let’s ignore tax ‘n stuff for a minute) per year shall we?
5.12% of 1,369,847 is 70,136.16 per year in solid interest.
70 GRAND. That’s 70 GRAND. They earn 28,000 combined. AGH! Are they on drugs? They could sod the jobs off and live off the interest alone !!!
OK, ok, you’re right – they’ve got to buy a “nice-sized” house. Let’s say that’ll cost them.. errr.. 300,000 – that’s pretty decent for South Wales and I doubt they’re the type of people to want a million pound mansion. So, if they spend 300,000 on a house that’d give them 1,069,847 left.
So how much interest will they be getting per year now? Oh, a mere 54,776.
Insane. Insane. You know what I’d do if I were them?
I’d get a house, get a couple of nice cars and start your own business selling proper-sized burgers and proper-sized chips right next door to McDonalds. Hahaaaa!
Oh, oh, and if I was Emma I’d stop washing my hair in that chip fat. Sorry love, but you need to sort that out.