I don't think I could handle winning it. I'm almost afraid to play because I might win and then I would go into complete meltdown probably. I wouldn't take the lump sum payment. I know that. I'd make it my goal to spend each payment as quickly as possible. Lawyers and financial planners be damned!
Bankruptcy aside, time value of money is also important, and I believe you don't really need to have that high of a return rate to beat the annuity option. The only problem is hiring a lawyer that isn't a sleazebag, and hiring a financial adviser that isn't incompetent.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/11/news/powerball-jackpot-win-guarantee/index.html?iid=hp-stack-dom Could you game the system and guarantee yourself a $1.4 billion Powerball jackpot? Here's the theory: At $2 a ticket and 1 in 292 million odds, you could seemingly buy every Powerball combination for "just" $584 million -- and still walk away with a massive profit. The lump-sum jackpot payment is estimated to be about $868 million. That alone would give you a handsome $284 million profit if you bought every ticket. And since there are $92 million in lower-tier prizes, you'd win all of those too. And by flooding the system with all those tickets you purchased, the lump-sum value of the jackpot would rise by $200 million -- which you'd be guaranteed to get back. That's a grand total of $1.2 billion in winnings, $576 million of which would be profit. The best part: Since you would guarantee yourself a win, all your losing lottery tickets would be tax-deductible. That means you wouldn't have to pay taxes on the first $584 million of your winnings. But don't head over to the ATM to withdraw $584 million. There are two big holes in this theory. 1) You probably would have to share the ticket There were 440 million tickets sold during the previous drawing. Though there will probably be more tickets sold this time around, let's assume for the moment that Wednesday's drawing attracts the same amount of interest as the last one. By buying every combination, you'd guarantee yourself a victory, but you'd have just a 22% chance of buying the only winning ticket and keeping that jackpot all to yourself, according to Victor Matheson, professor of economics and accounting at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. You'd have a better chance (33%) of sharing with one other person or even two other people (25%). You'd also have a 12% chance of sharing it with three people and a 6% chance of splitting your winnings with four others. All it would take is one other winner to make your $584 million investment unprofitable. Don't let the fact that there were no winners during the last drawing fool you. That was unusual, given the amount of interest. With 440 million ticket sold, there was a little more than a 77% chance that at least one person would have won the Powerball last week, Matheson said. 2) You couldn't possibly buy that many lottery tickets You have to buy Powerball tickets in person. That's a lot of transactions. If you were able to buy one ticket every second, it would still take you more than nine years to buy every combination. And that's optimistic: You have to ensure that you buy every number just once -- not just 292 million quick-picks. Even if you could deploy an army of people to buy all those tickets for you, it's still extremely unlikely that you'd be able to buy every ticket. "Think about how many lottery ticket stations there are nationwide and how busy they've been, running nonstop over the past three days," said Matheson. "Even still, they were only able to sell 440 million tickets." Buying every lottery combination has actually been tried once. In February 1992, an Australian consortium tried to corner a $24 million Virginia Lotto jackpot. But the group was only able to purchase 2.4 million of the 7 million combinations before time ran out. So though it's technically feasible to guarantee yourself a lottery victory, realistically, it's not.
if you see the powerball winner driving down the street... <iframe src="https://vine.co/v/iMBgHaDnlEz/embed/simple" width="600" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe><script src="https://platform.vine.co/static/scripts/embed.js"></script>
I think it's all legit, but what I do find oddly unusual is that the pool seems to get bigger every year. That may or may not be true. It just seems that way. We have a bigger and bigger jackpots. How is that possible? Nothing has changed regarding how people can buy and have access to tickets. So it's not like the internet gave greater access, though it has gained some traction, someone still has to go buy the ticket for you. And the more people play you would think the more variable the opportunity to win a big jackpot. Yet that jackpot seems to grow exponentially each year. It's like nobody even blinks an eye at it. There's no much money to be made it just makes me scratch my head a bit. I'm playing. Don't get me wrong. I want in. But the plausibility of the pots continuing grow year by year doesn't make intuitive sense to me. It could be said there is so much money to be made who would dare rig it, yet by declaring no winner there's nearly 1 billion put in the hands of the government and nobody is really hurt. We all had fun. What is 1$ to $20 these days. Nobody would really blink. So it just seems like something to good to be true. And how hard would it be really to rig. You have access to all of the data if you really wanted to know what numbers to draw for a non win. And of course the lawless doers could justify the means by sending dollars to education or whatever. So in the minds eye what harm... it's a win win. Just saying there too much money in this now for a government not to think about using the system to meet a necessary end when it really needs it. but game on!
They lowered the odds to win the jackpot recently. That's why the jackpot is getting bigger, its harder to win the big prize, however its easier to win the smaller prizes. Also people tend to buy exponentially more tickets when the pot gets larger.
Would you leave the country? OmegaSupreme has me worried about lawsuits I can see myself hiding out in Santiago for a few years
We need a petition for Obama to stop the madness and just give every household in the US 1.5 million. Still leaves more than enough to the US govt.
Which is hilarious in is logical absurdity. I'll not waste my dollar for a nonexistent chance at $54 million, but $900 million? HERE TAKE MY MONEY PLEASE AND BURN IT UP CAUSE THAT'S MEGAYACHT SCRATCH DUDE It's human nature obviously and everybody is tempted by it, the behavioralists have done soem fascinating work on it.
May as well buy a ticket. It's not like my day job gonna pay $1 billion anytime soon. <iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Wc5M8mH0ZKc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Make Up your own numbers. . . .or Quick Pick?? If the odds at 293 million to 1 . . .. and 293 million people get a quick pick Shouldn't someone win? The idea that the Quick Pick is giving out duplicate numbers is . . . .repugnant I bought my EXCLUSIVE rights to those numbers quick pick!!! Rocket River
Is it possible to claim the prize anonymously? Just in case I win, I do not want everyone to know about this.
There are only I believe 5 states that let you collect anonymously and Texas, unfortunately, is not one of them. If you do when they say you should go to a Trust and Estate lawyer before you even collect the prize for counsel on the subject.
