Grateful Teenage Lottery Winner Gives the Whole Thing to His Parents

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An anonymous 19-year-old from Michigan won a huge Lottery payout last week, but it sounds like his parents are the real winners, because the grateful teenage lottery winner decided to give almost the entire prize to them.

According to SheKnows, the teenager says he stopped by a gas station to fill up his car after dropping a friend off, and he decided to buy a scratch-off Lottery ticket. When it said he won $500,000, he thought they were messing with him. He was thrilled when he found out that it was real, but he surprised everyone when he picked up the money and said he was actually going to keep just $5,000 for himself and give the rest to his parents.

”I’m going to keep about $5,000 for myself to invest, and I’m going to give the rest to my parents,” he said. ”My parents have done so much for my sister and me, helping them takes a big weight off of their shoulders and mine.”

That’s a pretty huge deal. Even after taxes, a windfall like that could make a huge difference to a 19-year-old’s life. It’s not enough to live in luxury forever, but it’s enough to pay for college anywhere he wanted to go. Or he could invest it now and have a huge financial buffer by the time he’s 30 or 40. Or he could spend it all on watches and cars and be broke in a year; he wouldn’t be the first.

The fact that he’s thinking about his parents and their security is deeply impressive, and it also makes a lot of sense, too. If his parents are taken care of, then that’s something he doesn’t have to worry about. The fact that he still seems grateful for everything his parents did for him speaks really well of his character, as does the fact that when given the opportunity to do whatever he wanted with a huge sum of money, he decided that what he wanted to do was take care of his family.

The teenager says he’s ecstatic about his win, and he hasn’t been able to stop smiling since it happened. His parents probably haven’t, either.