The Powerball jackpot has soared to an estimated $1.04 billion after no tickets matched all six numbers in Saturday night’s drawing.
Saturday night’s drawing produced white balls 19, 30, 37, 44 and 46 and red Powerball 22.
The $1.04 billion prize – an estimated $478.2 million in cash value – is the second-largest jackpot this year, topped only by a $1.08 billion prize won on July 19 by a ticketholder in California.
If I win I’ll give everyone in this thread a million dollars.
So, if there’s 60 people in the thread, everyone gets $16,667
I see you all fell for my cunning ruse. Definitely not something I figured out after I posted. Not at all.
You are of course joking. But on the infinitly tiny odds you win, and the similarly ridiculous odds you follow through, I’ll comment
But that just means the million will be divided up even more, reducing your share! ;)
I hope you win, keep your word, and the news runs a story on it afterwards thats grows the user base and specifically siphons users from Reddit. I want to see Reddit burn to the ground.
I would like to win.
So are PowerBall and Mega Millions now rigged to make sure that the jackpot always hits $1B before a winner is drawn?
Rigged in the sense that they intentionally made the odds so long as to almost ensure it would routinely go weeks and weeks without a winner. So yes, it is by design.
They changed this some years ago. Odds used to be better, they made them worse on purpose to get bigger jackpots.
Which makes it less worthwhile to play, IMHO. Odds were horrible before the change and now they’re WORSE? No thanks.
ETA: I have not done it in a while, but I might buy a ticket for fun. It is worth a few dollars just to dream a little.
So is it optimal strategy to never play on a new (non rolled over) session? Seems like a bit of a prisoners’ dilemma if everyone realises that
I imagine their sales go up fast when so-called “news” outlets (like this community) report that it’s hit that level.
Never mind that it makes your already infinitesimal odds of winning even smaller, when the regular jackpot would already be a life-changing amount of money. People who only buy tickets when the jackpot goes up are just falling even harder for the scam than those who buy when the jackpot is “low”.
The odds of winning don’t change based on the number of people who buy tickets.
I was told years ago when I worked at a convince store our loto rep said white balls coming out of the machine are fake it never random. They decide when it pays out. He claims it only pays out when they earn double what will be paid out. This back when loto got up to like 4 million. So they would earn 8 and then give the illusion that the white balls came out and gave a winner.
He says they preload the winning numbers. Since it all electronic they can keep people from winning for as long as they want because they know all numbers submitted.
Well if he works as a lotto rep in the field, we know he’s in the loop on a plan that would land dozens of people in jail above him.
I’m not American, please explain, why is the cash value only 478.2 million? Is that after taxes or something?
It’s not after taxes.
The “jackpot” is what you get if you select an annual annuity over 30 years.
The cash value is what you get if you want it all today.
Taxes come after.
This site explains it well: https://www.usamega.com/powerball/jackpot
TL/DR it’s not even 300 million by the time they fuck you in the arse 😂
That’s just false advertising
Yes. They withhold taxes, and at that point it’s all in the highest bracket, and you haven’t had the cash to get a bunch of credits and deductions.
Some lotteries offer an annuity style payout, over 20 years. This can reduce the tax implications over the whole life, but inflation and not having the money invested can eat it up.
It’s a trade off that would be great to have to worry about.
The taxes are not included in that figure. That’s the actual prize pool money they’d have on hand in case of a win. The advertised jackpot is an estimate of an annuity paid off investing that prize pool in securities over the course of 30 years
The lottery will withhold 24% for federal income tax – but you’d likely owe more as the vast majority of that income will wind up taxed at 37%. Then there’s also state income taxes in most places.
If I win this jackpot and take the lump sum it would break down something like:
$478,200,000
-$33,474,000 (7% state tax)
-$176,898,427 (37% federal tax)
= $267,827,573 (total after tax)
2 things: taxes are taken from the winnings, and the jackpot quoted is the amount you would get if you picked the regular payments rather than lump sum.
The regular payments include trust fund interest/growth I think, so you get more.
It’s confusing as all hell. I’d much prefer it tax free and lump sum. Tell me exactly what I get, don’t dress it up to make it look better than it is!
The tax-free annuity payment version is by far the better deal. But some people elect to get the lump sum in cash, and you end up getting far less than half of it, esp after taxes.
The annuity isn’t tax free. You pay taxes on that income every year just like (and in addition to) any other income you have.
Also, you could most likely beat the rate of return on those investments if you know what you’re doing. But on the other hand most lottery winners won’t know what they’re doing. Additionally the annuity can be a stopgap to keep you from losing everything all at once.
This has never been true. If u take the annuity they take the lump and invest that and instead of getting the full profits of that investment you get the same flat rate every year.
If you get the lump sum though that’s a large amount growing when invested. You can easily take that and grow it into more than you’d get over time from the payments.
Stupid tax.
Yep. That’s $1.04b taken from the pockets mostly people who should be trying to put it to savings, not giving away money on a pipedream. Giving it to a winner who statistically will likely have their life ruined by such a windfall.
It’s goddam stupid. The “causes” the lottery pays back to, like education, should be funded by taxing those who don’t need the extra money, not by duping people who desperately need every dollar they earn.
Oddly enough not entirely. Yes it is a total waste of money to buy a ticket, but I remembered hearing a piece a while back that broke down why the poor bought the majority of tickets. Basically it broke down to the fact that they knew there was no chance of them ever getting out of poverty without some major windfall event. They know that there is no real chance of winning, but sadly it was the closest thing to hope they had. They aren’t stupid just desperate.
