One Louisiana couple is going to have an extra merry Christmas this year after finding a winning lottery ticket while cleaning their home for Thanksgiving guests.
via NYDN:
Tina and Harold Ehrenberg found the $1.8 million lottery ticket sitting on their nightstand on Nov. 17, just two weeks before the deadline expired to cash it.
“At first I thought that we might have made a mistake, misreading the numbers or the expiration date,” the husband told ABC News. “So we checked it a number of times and sure enough they were the right numbers. It was pretty exciting.”
Harold said he and Tina wanted to get to the lottery office as soon as possible but it was Saturday and the office was closed. Tina said she “called the winning numbers hotline over and over,” read a Louisiana Lottery statement.Usually, state lotteries allow only 180 days to redeem winning tickets.
“I kept waiting for something to go wrong,” said the husband, but after visiting the office, “They congratulated us and then it became very real.”
After taxes and fees, the Ehrenbergs collected a cool $1,274,313. They claim they have no big plans for the money and just want to hold on to it for retirement.
“We don’t have any plans to buy anything crazy or go on any big trips,” said Tina. “The most fun is going to be depositing that check!” interjected Harold.
While $1.27 million is hardly chump change, the lottery win comes in the wake of a $1.537 Mega Millions win on Oct. 23 and a $688 million Powerball ticket hitting on Oct. 27.
Must be nice!
