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States take in hundreds of millions of dollars from numbered ping pong balls and the winner gives up almost half to taxes. Good deal for states and the Federal Treasury, not such a good deal for millions of bettors.
To be frank,I dont know IF ANY WINNINGS are real!!
Does anyone know ANYONE personally who has won BIG?
Yes, indirectly. A paralegal who worked for my SIL won big. $100 million. She got about $30 million. Gave away $20 million. Eventually went back to work after about 5 years. She still had the money and invested it well enough to live off the income, but she felt worthless. She did not go back to the same job, and SIL changed careers, so, no idea whether she kept working.
She did have to move to a secret location and change all of her phone numbers etcetera, but she was one of the few I have heard of who did not end up with her life ruined. She contacted SIL through an anonymous E-mail account after about a year and communicated a bit back and forth (eventually she needed a reference to go back to work). She was reportedly comfortable and secure, but did not find happiness in the money.
To be frank,I dont know IF ANY WINNINGS are real!!
Does anyone know ANYONE personally who has won BIG?
I can't say I know anyone who has won big but our neighbor won enough from a lottery pool at work to buy her house and enough to set up a nice college fund for her son. There was a lottery pool at work and they won 10,000. The pool was pretty large so each one collected about five hundred dollars.
I had a friend at one of my jobs that did a lottery pool. Most of his regulars weren't around that day and I didn't have any money on me. He had the winning numbers and didn't play
Somebody's going to win it and we all wish it was us.
It cracks me up that people come out of the woodwork to buy tickets when the pot gets really big.
Why?
Because $50 million or $100 million just isn't worth it, but $421 million is? What are you going to be able to buy with the latter that you couldn't buy with the former? Nothing. And the fact that more people play when the pot gets bigger means that you're more likely to have to split that big pot with other winners, anyway.
Good Lord. If I played the lottery (I don't - the only ticket I've ever bought was a $1 scratch-off that I damaged while working at a convenience store decades ago, and was required to buy it - I did, and I won my $1 back), I'd probably just play when the pot is low so as to avoid the crush of people who think that their life would be so, so much better if they could afford 20 mansions instead of just 5, and 5 Gulfstreams instead of a mere 1 or 2.
I think people come out to buy the tickets for the big jackpots because they start generating press and interest. I rarely think about buying a ticket but when people start talking about a big payoff, I sometimes will.
I have no illusions about winning. But I enjoy the fantasy of thinking about what I'd do with the money if I did win. To me, spending the drive into work thinking about how I'd divvy up $240 million is worth the $2.
They are not selling any realistic chance of winning. They are selling hope, or a dream. You cannot convince yourself you surely have the winning ticket and plan how to spend the money, unless you buy a ticket. And planning how to spend the money is fun. Costs less than a movie and is often more entertaining. Plus you are supporting schools a little bit.
Even more fun, buy a ticket and leave it as a part of a tip, or give it as a gift. "Wouldn't you want to die if they won?" No. I would be thrilled for them.
I did give a scratchier to a favored waitress once and she won $500. She insisted on giving me half, so I left her a $260 tip the next time I was there. She was a little annoyed with me, but I pointed out I gave her the scratchier, not half a scratchier and if it lost, I was not going to give her 50 cents more of a tip.
It cracks me up that people come out of the woodwork to buy tickets when the pot gets really big.
Why?
Because $50 million or $100 million just isn't worth it, but $421 million is? What are you going to be able to buy with the latter that you couldn't buy with the former? Nothing. And the fact that more people play when the pot gets bigger means that you're more likely to have to split that big pot with other winners, anyway.
Good Lord. If I played the lottery (I don't - the only ticket I've ever bought was a $1 scratch-off that I damaged while working at a convenience store decades ago, and was required to buy it - I did, and I won my $1 back), I'd probably just play when the pot is low so as to avoid the crush of people who think that their life would be so, so much better if they could afford 20 mansions instead of just 5, and 5 Gulfstreams instead of a mere 1 or 2.
There is actually a pretty huge difference between a $50 million jackpot and a $400 million jackpot.
Lottery tickets are never (or almost never) good investments, but your return on investment when the jackpot swells to many hundreds of millions is much, much, much better than when it is less than $100 million.
If you can't plainly see this, perhaps math isn't your strong suit.
I don't play because I think it is a waste of money. However, just as an observation, nobody ever wins until the pot is enormous. Wins should be random, meaning a few lower value pots should be won and they never are, which makes me suspect that the game is fixed in some fashion to allow the pot to become enormous, which is what brings the gamblers out in force. So, I suppose if I played, I would play when there was a chance that someone would win the lottery and not play when there was no chance of anybody winning the lottery.
Odds of it being me who wins are too astronomical to waste my $2 on.
The wins are random. When a big pot is hit and the jackpot is reset, the jackpot is smaller... and guess what? Way fewer tickets are sold. When each ticket has about a 1 in 170 million chance of winning and only a few million tickets are sold, odds are overwhelming that the jackpot will be rolled over into the next drawing. Now, when the jackpot gets into the hundreds of millions and you start having 50-100 million+ tickets sold, the odds of at least one ticket getting sold are many times higher.
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