How many times have you bought a lottery scratchcard and half-heartedly scratched at the numbers with a coin not expecting to win anything?
Mum Katie Smythe, 24, was one such person. She had only £85 in the bank when she bought her card and after giving it a scratch was about to throw it in the bin.
But then something caught her eye – the £1 million jackpot!
Incredibly, Katie, from Hengoed, near Caerphilly, Wales, almost missed out on the chance to join the ranks of lottery millionaires, but can look forward to the best Christmas ever for her and her three children, aged five, four and one.
Katie needed help from her dad to pay the bills days before she bought the Merry Millionaire Scratchcard.
She said: "I was in the shop and decided to play the Scratchcard I had just bought. Even though I unveiled the jackpot number 25 which was worth £1m it didn't sink in and I just kept on until I revealed all the other numbers.
"I got to the end and was just about the throw it away when my friend screamed 'look what you've won' and I just stared at it in disbelief.
"I rang my fiancé Nicky from the shop, but he didn't believe me. He wouldn't even believe it when the shop assistant assured him I'd won.
"He only believed me when I got back to the house and showed him the card. Nicky proposed to me a while ago, but we just haven't been able to afford a wedding. Now, we'll be able to have a wedding I could only ever have dreamed of.
"And what a Christmas we'll all have. We're a large and very close-knit family and we love our own company.
"We celebrated the win with two family parties and I can only think that Christmas this year will be such a special one for all of us now.
"We have literally gone from having absolutely nothing to being able to buy whatever we want. It feels a little bit scary - but so very good all at the same time."