When Jayden Clarke was 12, his mum picked he and his sister up from school and told the kids there was a big surprise for them waiting at home, which they initially thought meant another sibling was on the way.
Instead they were shown a ‘gigantic check’ from the lottery, and although Jayden didn’t really understand what the lottery was or how much the money was going to change their lives, his parents were excited and that made him excited.
His dad had always put the same lottery numbers up and this lucky time had earned his family millions.
“Overnight we went from pretty decently poor to multi-millionaires and life obviously changed from there,” Jayden explained in a TikTok video where he talked about the impact the winnings had on his family.
The Australian family had gone from ‘fighting to keep’ their home to suddenly having an awful lot of money to spend, which understandably had a major impact on their lives.
As for what the money did to their family, Jayden said that since he was young, he at first didn’t really understand how much money it was but felt like winners ‘have no option to be a normal person’.
Jayden said his parents took the kids out of school for a couple of weeks to ‘plan how to do life’ because they had nobody to guide them through this newfound wealth.
However, there are some downsides to growing up in the wake of a lottery win, besides the obvious cases where some winners come to sorely regret their prize, as he explained that ‘you have this weird mentality on work and the value of money’.
He said: “Even though we grew up still very structured in a way that if we wanted something we had to have a reason to get it or work towards it in a way, I feel like the experience of winning the lottery makes you feel you have no option to be a normal person.
“Normal life never felt natural, it wasn’t because we had crazy money and we’d go and be lavish because we’d remain pretty normal, but it was more like my life is very different.
.jpg "Man whose family won the lottery when he was a teenager revealed the worst part about becoming rich overnight 3")
“Growing up, at least in Australia, it felt like when I did become aware of it we would always make it very clear that we didn’t deserve because we didn’t work hard.
“Even growing up we had the most beautiful house, like it was a blueprint for a reality show.
“Very often we’d feel out of place, in between these two realities and just not fitting in anywhere.”
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He added that his parents carried ‘guilt for having the money’ and he often felt like an ‘outcast’, like the winnings weren’t anything to be proud of, but things have got better since he’d moved to LA.
Despite it all, he is still ‘grateful to this day’ for the impact the winnings had on his family as there were certainly lots of positives to go along with it.
