Jack Averty: The game of life - why you have to be in it to win it

New cars, big houses, eating at the fanciest restaurants – the high life that everyone dreams of just thrust upon you one night.

You haven’t had to work for it, it just lands in your lap through a twist of fate.

Of course, we don’t begrudge these people, they’re normal people like us who got a fantastic bit of luck – we’re just a tad jealous and bitter.

Money is built up in life as the be all and end all; a successful life is having lots of money. How big’s your house, how fast can your car go, what wine do you drink, where do you go on holiday – the list of chest-puffing questions from the rich can make you queazy.

But thankfully we’ve learnt this week that money really isn’t the be all and end all.

As reported in the Star, a woman who won £1 million on the lottery this time last year decided to keep her job.

Fair enough you might think, she could be some hotshot lawyer or a high-ranking police officer who doesn’t want to give up on her career.

But no, this fantastic lady, who isn’t a million miles away from retirement age, works behind the service desk at a supermarket.

An eye-watering £1 million, enough to sail off into the sunset with, yet she chooses to trek to work most days. The same mind-numbingly boring journey most of us each undertake day in, day out – bumping along the motorway each morning, grinding through eight hours of work, bumping along the motorway each night. Why do we do it? It’s all just to earn a bit of money so we can support families, or save up for a house, or a car, or really just to have a life. So why would this woman, who has the one thing we all go to work for, still work? Well the answer she and her husband (who by the way also still works as a tiler) gave was simple: “We like working, it’s the only way you get to meet people and socialise.”

Sure, it’s great to have money, as the husband happily admitted it makes him and his family feel more secure not having to worry about bills, but that isn’t what makes them happy.

‘Money doesn’t make you happy’ is probably the oldest cliché in the book, but it isn’t half true. Ask this millionaire couple to list what’s most important to them in their life and money wouldn’t make the top three, it might not even make their top five.

Whether money is life changing or not is up to you and how you deal with it.

This couple bought a new car, a new house, a car each for their two children and one of their dad’s a council home.

But they still have the same friends, the same family, they have kept the same jobs – really their day-to-day life hasn’t changed much at all.

It could have, they could have decided to move abroad or go on a year-long cruise. Instead their lavish expenditure was moving from Staffordshire to, er, Staffordshire.

Before they won, the pair did not sit desperately praying for the money to roll in. They got on with their lives, enjoying it and smiling their way through each day.

They didn’t sit in front of the TV clutching at their lottery tickets desperate for tonight to be their night, it was just something they did for a bit of fun. Their life before and after winning the lottery last year should be an example to us all.

Why do we obsess over money when it really isn’t that important at all? OK you need enough to pay bills and get the kids off to university, but that doesn’t require millions.

Most of us constantly scratch around for excuses as to why we aren’t happy and why our lives aren’t good ‘at the moment’ because we can’t afford this or we can’t afford that. But if you boil it all down you’ll see life is actually pretty great and most of us have everything we need to be happy.

If we could just make that conscious choice to smile and be happy then everything would fall into place.

Really what would you do if you won a million tomorrow? Buy a house? A car? A cosy flat or luxury mansion; it would be with the same people you live with now. Whether a banged up Citroën or a new over-priced Mercedes, it would be the same person driving it. The amazing thing about this lottery couple is that six months prior to their million pound win, another married couple living just 200 yards away also won a million on the same draw.

And what have they done with their life? Jetted off to the Bahamas for a life of luxury?

The husband still works for a Tarmacing firm while the wife still works for a delivery firm. Where do they live? In the same house they did before they won. What do they do? Everything they used to before.

Money has provided them with a bit of extra comfort, not happiness.

We can’t all be financially comfortable in life, but we can try and be happy.