{"id":539734,"date":"2026-07-23T03:58:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T03:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/539734\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T03:58:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T03:58:16","slug":"six-zeroes-took-a-while-to-compute-says-new-lotto-millionaire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/539734\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Six zeroes took a while to compute’ says new Lotto millionaire"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Christchurch woman says she was “light-headed and in a bit of shock” after learning she’d been carrying around a $1 million winning Lotto ticket for a week.<\/a> <\/p>\n

“I hadn\u2019t heard that anyone had won in Christchurch, so it came as a bit of a shock,” she said.<\/p>\n

The woman, a regular Lotto player, was going about her day last Wednesday when she decided to check her ticket at a local store from the July 8 draw.<\/p>\n

On scanning the ticket, the terminal displayed a message saying she\u2019d won “a major prize”.<\/p>\n

“I asked the staff member how much it was, and she slid the receipt across to show me that it was $1 million,” she said. <\/p>\n

“There was no doubting there was six zeroes there, but it took a while to compute.”<\/p>\n

The woman then called her husband who was at work.<\/p>\n

“I told him I needed to see him straight away, but not to worry, and that everything was OK,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

After the pair met up, the woman told her husband she was “light-headed and in a bit of shock”.<\/p>\n

“His face went completely white.”<\/p>\n

Instead of explaining, she showed him the prize receipt.<\/p>\n

Her husband said he “didn\u2019t really process what I was looking at”.<\/p>\n

“When I saw it was a prize, I actually thought it said $1000.”<\/p>\n

His wife then told him to have a closer look.<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s when it clicked,” he said with a laugh. “It wasn\u2019t a thousand dollars, it was a million. All I could say was, ‘Oh my goodness’.<\/p>\n

“Then I had to go back to work and act like everything was completely normal \u2013 that was hard!”<\/p>\n

The couple spent the evening talking about their win and what the future might hold.<\/p>\n

“It still feels unreal,” the woman said. “I think it\u2019s going to take some time before it fully sinks in. We\u2019re going to take some time to think about what to do with it.”<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Lotto’s Powerball prize was not won last night, and has rolled over to $40 million for Saturday’s draw<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Christchurch woman says she was “light-headed and in a bit of shock” after learning she’d been carrying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[158,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-539734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-christchurch-canterbury","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}