A trip to the supermarket ended up being life changing for a Pukekohe couple whose decision to pick up a Lotto ticket with spare change they found in the car saw them win $1 million with Lotto First Division.

The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, usually picks up his Lotto tickets online at MyLotto – but this week, he and his wife decided to do things a little differently.

“We’d just parked up at the supermarket and my wife was poking around in the middle console looking for something, when I spotted a bunch of change rattling around in there which she kept in the car for parking meters and that kind of thing,” said the man.

“There were quite a few coins in there, so I said there aren’t that many parking meters around these days – and suggested we spent some of it on a Lotto ticket. My wife laughed and scooped up the coins, which we used to pick up a Lotto ticket after our shop.”

With the little yellow ticket stashed away in his wife’s purse, the couple went about their weekend not knowing just how lucky that decision would be.

“Over breakfast on Sunday my wife decided to check the ticket with her phone. I noticed she had gone very quiet, then she looked up and said to me, ‘you’ll never believe this, but I think we’ve won Lotto’,” the man said.

“I jumped up and looked at the numbers on the screen and then at the ticket – almost immediately I spotted one line with all the numbers, it almost jumped out at me. I turned to my wife in absolute disbelief and saw she was shaking all over, so I gave her a big hug.

“We couldn’t believe it – you always imagine what it would be like to hold a winning Lotto ticket, but for it to actually happen… well, that’s something totally different,” said the man.

With the winnings now safely claimed, the couple are looking forward to paying off their mortgage and setting their family up for the future.

“It still feels surreal to be honest – in the best possible way. My wife keeps saying to me, ‘if you hadn’t teased me about the parking meters, I would never have bought that ticket’ – it’s incredible how things come together sometimes,” the man said.

The winning Lotto First Division ticket was sold at Countdown Pukekohe South for the draw on Saturday 26 February.

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