By David Field

I know someone who won a significant amount of money on the lottery recently. It was a seven-figure sum which, as you can well imagine was pretty life-changing from a financial point of view.

Stressing about finances, how to make money, how to save money, what to do with it - all this seems to take up a ridiculous amount of time in the modern age. I don't like having to think about money, but I have to think about it, because we all do. But if you had more money than you could ever hope to spend, then surely you don't have to worry any more?

You could buy a lot of stuff, that's for sure. Basically, anything you fancied having you could just buy, without considering whether you really want it, or whether you can accept having to cut back on your luxury spending that month in order to afford it. More importantly, though, it would buy you pure financial freedom. You wouldn't have to go to work in order to pay for the roof over your head. You wouldn't have to think about interest rates, or whether a fixed-rate mortgage is the right choice for you. Switching gas suppliers will be low on your list of priorities because it's going to save you £100 a year, which is frankly nothing to a multimillionaire. There would be no need to consider consolidating your loans or topping up you pension fund. In fact, the idea of a pensions crisis would be a joke to you.

This may all be true, but from the experience of the lottery winner I knew - I would be a lot richer now if I could call him a close friend - the idea that millionaires don't worry about money is simply ridiculous.

First of all, a million really isn't that much when you think about it over the period of you entire life. For example, say you earned a salary of £30,000 for 40 years, that's £1,200,000 right there. OK, so winning £10 million might mean that you never have to work again, but the problem is that when you're a millionaire, you start wanting to live like a millionaire - making your money disappear all too quickly.

The man I knew reacted really badly to money. I think he was probably quite happy with the state of his life, and didn't really need a massive injection of cash in order to make it better. When he got the money, he threw a party, got the nickname 'Generous Roy' and spent it as quickly as he could. As a young man he took the opportunity to travel around the world and do things he would never have got the chance to do otherwise. But I think it took the challenge out of life for him.

Still, though, there are lots of people living on the bread line who would kill for that kind of problem. Millionaires still have money troubles like the rest of us, but they're in no position to complain.