Invested the restĪs an ex-banker, I was concerned with inflation eating away at my money. Besides donating to underprivileged children, I gave part of my winnings away in the form of ang paos and lunches to a nursing home too. I decided to pledge S$5,000 to help local charities. I also wanted to return the good fortune in a small way. I was firm not to let the rest of my relatives and friends know as I did not want any attention or requests from them. The first thing I did after getting the cash was to give S$10,000 to a few of my closest family members as a small token of appreciation. The first thing I did with half a million dollars Enjoy your own dedicated relationship manager and privileged access to a whole suite of preferential rates with Priority Banking. Ready to level up? Find out how you can make your money work harder and smarter for you. As I can be quite reckless with money, I handed the entire cheque to my wife and returned to work after that. When we left, I kept telling myself to act normal. Through it all, I was particularly happy that all my financial worries such as paying for my daughter’s education were settled. The clerk handed me a cheque with my name on it. We waited calmly for my queue number to be called before going to the counter and producing my IC and winning slip. Together with my wife, we had a simple breakfast of kopi and kaya toast before walking over to the Singapore Pools HQ.

Collecting my winnings at the Singapore Pools HQ I suddenly had extra bounce in my steps and life seemed like a fairytale. Reality only sunk in the day after when I was on my morning jog and realised that I had achieved my dream of winning big at TOTO. The next morning, I frantically called the outlet to confirm my winnings. I quickly woke my wife up and asked her to double-check my slip in case my tired eyes were playing tricks on me. Over the years, I’ve won small amounts but never this big of a windfall.

First time winning such a huge amount of money The winning number was a broken down combination of my birth date into day, month, year and age. I usually buy numbers that are important to me, like my car plate number, address and birthday. Bought numbers with special and personal meaning I collected my prize just a few weeks shy of Chinese New Year, one month before the deadline. I was very lucky to have checked my ticket on time, because prizes mus t be claimed within 180 days (including weekends and public holidays) from the date of the draw. Lo and behold, it was a perfect match - I had officially won the top prize of S$572,571. ‘Are my dreams of hitting the jackpot coming true?’ I thought to myself as I scanned the website for the sixth and final number. When the fourth and fifth number matched as well, a sudden rush of excitement came over me. When I matched the first three numbers, my eye widened in disbelief and my heart started beating faster. I was about to go to bed but decided to finish checking them out anyway. Now, I don’t exactly remember which day it was, but it was close to 11pm when I had just two or three slips left. I was on my way to work when I decided to stop by an NTUC outlet at Dawson Place to place my regular S$1 TOTO bet for the draw on 18 December 2017.Īs I often bet (two times a week, for each draw), my habit was to check all my tickets at one go, once every two months.įast forward to February 2018, I decided to dig all my bets out and check them online. Patience paid off - to the tune of more than half a million - for a 58-year-old Singaporean man who regularly bets on TOTO. Money Confessions, a SingSaver series, will excite you, inspire you, and leave you wishing to get financially woke. Real stories about money from real people.

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