Chris and Sue Bowers were lucky ... they kept their ticket safe and won £3.5 million in the UK National Lottery. The couple in this following story did not.

This is a sad story, but as you'll read, preventable.

A young English couple were convinced they had a UK National Lottery £3 million (US$4.9m) winning ticket. But they couldn't find it.

It could have had a happy ending. UK Camelot lottery officials investigated for 7 weeks and finally gave them the thumbs up, accepting that the couple could have owned the correct numbers.

But they denied them the win because of a 30-day time limit on declaring lost tickets.

The couple were devastated, and called for the game's organizers to relax the rules.

But rightly, Camelot decided it could not override their thirty-day rule.

Moral of the story: You must possess the ticket in order to claim the prize. Even though there was an example in the USA where a winner was tracked down and given the win, this is rare.

Keep every ticket you play, and hold them for at least the time required by your lottery to claim a prize. It's only good sense.

Read More: What To Do Before, During And After Your Lottery Win