Set for Life: Rules, Price & Odds

How to Play Set for Life

The whole idea behind the UK National Lottery is to raise money for social causes like education, rehabilitation, and whatnot. To make things interesting, the authority in the UK has designed a few different games for different demographics over the years.

Set for Life is one of the games you can find on the National Lottery website. As the name suggests, you’ll be Set for Life if you win the jackpot prize from this game. Set for Life is a very new programme compared to other prominent top casino games like the Lotto UK.

For reference, the UK Lotto started back in 1994. And the first draw for the Set for Life game took place in 2019. The motto of the game is “make every month amazing”. And we have to agree. Who wouldn’t think their months are amazing if they are Set for Life?

For the most part, the jackpot prizes for the lottery programs are not declared in advance. It’s because the jackpot can grow once the ticket sales start. The more tickets sold, the higher the jackpot goes. But you are a very new game that doesn’t follow this modality. Rather, it pays £10,000 to the jackpot winner every month for 30 years! You should see what message the National Lottery board is trying to get when they say “Set for Life”. If you keep receiving this humongous amount every month, you won’t have to work for a single day in your Life!

The draw process for the game is pretty much identical to the other games found on the National Lottery website. You start with selecting five main numbers from a pool. However, the collection is very small when compared to other ones. There are 47 numbers only, starting from 1 and ending at 47.

Once you’re done choosing the five main numbers, you’ll need to pick 1 Life Ball number. This is drawn from a pool of numbers 1 to 10. You get these six numbers a “play” or a “line”. For each of your payslips, you can select up to 7 lines.

In one go, you can buy up to 10 payslips. In many countries worldwide, the number of tickets you can buy for a lottery is restricted by the authority. While it’s true for the National Lottery in the UK, the limit is quite high if you ask us.

When you buy your lines, you can also decide what day of the week you want the draw for. Set for Life draws take place on Mondays and Thursdays. You can even buy tickets for up to 4 weeks to save the time of purchasing tickets again and again!

Rules of Set for Life

Since the beginning of the human race, the idea of draw-based games has been extremely popular. Maybe that’s why gambling goes back more than 3,000 years before the birth of Christ!

Lotteries are undoubtedly a part of the gambling industry, but it’s a more socially accepted one. But if anyone and everyone could win a lottery, it would lose its charm. Hence, the authorities like the National Lottery in the UK have devised a set of rules that all participants must follow. The rules include playing the game, purchasing the tickets, how the draw should occur, how winners can claim their prizes, etc.

Odds to Win the Prize

We’re in love with the Set for Life lottery for various reasons. The odds it offers on the winnings are undoubtedly one of them. We’ve seen quite a few lotteries in our time, but we haven’t seen such a user-friendly programme before.

The first prize of the jackpot, or the “Set for Life”, whatever you might want to call it, has odds of 1 in 15,339,390 to win. In other prominent jackpots, the odds are often hundreds of millions to 1! The 2nd prize is also quite good, and it can serve you for a very long time if you manage to win it. The odds for the2nd prize is 1 in 1,704,377.

As you go down the prize list, the odds become more favourable. For example, the 3rd prize gives you 73,045 to 1 odds, while the 4th prize gives you 1 in 8,116. The rest of the odds follow a similar pattern. The 5th prize has odds of 1 in 1,782, while the 6th prize has 1 in 198. Last but not least, the 7th and 8th prizes give you the odds of 1 in 134 and 1 in 15, respectively.

Overall, the Set for Life lottery is one of the best lottery programmes in the world in which you can participate. The drawback is that you must be a resident of the UK and Isle of Man, and you must be at least 18 years old.

Price of Set for Life Ticket

From what we’ve seen, the ticket price for national lotteries usually starts from £2. But Set for Life is an exception in that case as well! Each line starts at £1.50only. This is the 2nd cheapest lottery in the UK, beaten by Thunderball.

When you visit the National Lottery website, you’ll need to manually navigate to the Set for Life page to see the lines you can purchase. Your first task is choosing the numbers from the given pool.

After selecting the numbers, you’ll also need to dial in the settings for what day of the draw you want to participate in and how many weeks in advance you want to play. You can for only Mondays, Thursdays, or even for both days. In that case, your ticket prices will double. The same concept goes for how many weeks you want to go for. If you choose one week, you’ll only qualify for the draws the following week. If you choose 2, 3, or 4 weeks, the ticket price will also go up.

You already know that you can choose seven lines for a payslip and ten payslips at once. Considering the £1.50 price for each line, you can spend up to £10.50 on one payslip. If you buy ten payslips, the cost shoots to £105. Then again, this is the calculation for one day of the draw for one week only. If you go for two draws that week, the total price of the Set for Life ticket will be £210.

As you can see, the website gives you absolute freedom on how you want to approach your tickets. From beginners who don’t want to risk too much to high rollers who will buy all possible combinations, the Set for Life lottery is a perfect place for all. You should also find the tickets at the top UK casinos.

Set for Life Jackpot

You already know about the jackpot prize. As it’s not a traditional “jackpot” that you can anticipate, there’s no big reveal with each draw every week. Rather, everyone knows what they can win. Somehow, it gives the Set for Life lottery a different layer of charm that you can’t find on other programs.

As we said early, the biggest prize is £10,000 every month, for 30 years! If we do a rough calculation of how much that is, the calculator shows us a whopping 3,600,000! It might not be as flashy as a billion-pound payout, but you can’t deny that the payout is bad, especially when you consider the mere £1.50 winning ticket.

You win the jackpot when you match all five main numbers and the life ball. There's nothing to worry about if you match the five numbers but unfortunately miss the Life Ball number. You’ll still get £10,000 a month for a year! The rest of the prizes are all fixed that goes like £250, £50, £30, £20, £20, and £5. You can check the website to find the complete list of the prizes on the National Lottery UK website.

Biggest Win Made

Again, Set for Life doesn’t boast a traditional jackpot where a sudden win can create a world record. You already know that the maximum one can win is £10,000 in a month for pretty much the lifetime. And that’s the biggest win ever made. The latest winner was a man from Derbyshire, but his name isn’t disclosed to the public.

Results of Set for Life Prizes

Checking the Set for Life lottery results is pretty much the same process as the other lotteries in the UK. You can download the National Lottery app, check the website for the results or catch the draw live on the YouTube channel.

How to Claim Set for Life Prizes?

If you happen to win the Set for Life lottery, you need to contact the National Lottery office within ten days of the draw. Make sure to carry all necessary KYC documents with you. For prizes up to £600, you can collect them directly from the lottery seller in your locality.

Taxes on These Winnings

While lottery winnings are free in the UK, Set for Life prize money has an interesting element! The interest is subject to UK tax laws. But you don’t have to worry about it because the £10,000 each month is after deducting all taxes.

Our Opinion on Set for Life

Set for Life in the UK is a unique lottery that can be beneficial for many people. While the modality feels the same as other jackpots annuity programmes, it’s a breath of fresh air among the hundreds of regular jackpot payouts.

Set for Life FAQs

You may have a few questions regarding the Set for Life from what you've read so far. Let’s see if we can pinpoint and answer them.