The couple were headed to bed on Saturday night when the man checked his MyLotto app.<\/p>\n
\u201cI realised the $40m prize was split between two winners, and I was one of them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said he jumped out of bed and began pacing back and forth.<\/p>\n
\u201cPaying off the mortgage is going to be number one,\u201d said the man. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd there\u2019s a car I\u2019ve had my eye on for a while.<\/p>\n
He said they would take things slow and get advice before making decisions. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had a lifelong dream of helping animals, and this now gives me the opportunity to do that. I don\u2019t know what that looks like right now, but it\u2019s one of my goals for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
The couple said they hadn\u2019t had much time to celebrate yet but that they\u2019ll \u201cdefinitely do something special in the coming days\u201d.<\/p>\n
It was the biggest jackpot since November last year, when three lucky winners split a staggering $55m, taking home $18.3m each.<\/p>\n
Lotto NZ head of communications Will Hine said the second winners of the other half of the cash pot are yet to claim their $20m.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re urging anyone who bought their ticket from Blockhouse Bay Postshop & Stationers in Auckland to check their ticket and get in touch with us if they are the big winner.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a huge win. Someone is in for the shock of their life when they check their ticket.\u201d<\/p>\n
Powerball now sits at $5m for Saturday\u2019s draw. <\/p>\n
Lotto\u2019s biggest individual prize was $44.06m won by a ticket-holder in Auckland a decade ago.<\/p>\n
In 2021, a single ticket-holder in Waikato won $42.02m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The couple were headed to bed on Saturday night when the man checked his MyLotto app. \u201cI realised…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[267447,62923,51,8414,299,35964,305,42,38040,5511,13840,10506,73193,1132,43,20878,11112,2122,8692,223,40,38,41,39,6027,4741],"class_list":["post-550637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-267447","tag-201m","tag-auckland","tag-couple","tag-dream","tag-feels","tag-have","tag-headlines","tag-jackpot","tag-just","tag-like","tag-lotto","tag-lottos","tag-million","tag-news","tag-powerball","tag-scoop","tag-share","tag-split","tag-the","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-win","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550637","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=550637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}