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I don't play and I'm not driving 100+ miles to buy a ticket. State of NV, run by the greedy casinos and they don't want the competition for gaming dollars. I'd buy a ticket when the money gets this high. It'd make a great story IF I won. Who doesn't like a great story!
I will not put so much as a penny in a slot machine.
But I love when the people win who REALLY need the money. Makes me feel good even though I didn't contribute to them getting this money.
Been a poor college student, I can somewhat relate.
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.
When the pot becomes large enough, only then is it statistically justifiable to purchase a ticket based on the EVA formula.
Basically, the big jackpot lotteries are a social thing at work. Everyone throws in a couple of bucks, socializes in the lottery discussion and basically joins "the group". A form of networking if you will.
One of the places I worked at "Banned" internal lottery groups. They were afraid that if a group Won the entire team would quit all at the same time.
Didn't stop anyone from making Work Groups for Big Drawings, even our boss was in the pool.
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.
Yes, 50 million in Powerball is about 30 million cash. After taxes that's around 16 or 17 million depending on your state taxes. That's barely wealthy anymore. A retiree could live high on the hog, but a 20 or 30 year old winner would probably go broke well before middle age if they thought they needed a 10 million dollar home and 2 300k cars and a personal jet. A young person would do well to take 3 or 4 million and pay cash for the home, cars, everything. Then invest the rest to get maybe $700K/year to live on. They could live very nicely but not even close to blow-out no-budget rich.
A 400 million jackpot is around 240 mil cash and 130 million after taxes. You could actually live a fairly wealthy lifestyle on that for 60 years, but you'd still have to have a budget. Plenty of people who won that amount and more have gone broke because they thought they were rich.
Actually very few if any people have gone broke winning that much money. Most of the lottery to broke stories are not huge powerball type jackpots. Typically they are under $20 million and then, yes, it is quite easy to imagine going broke. After all, people who buy lottery tickets aren't usually the best at managing money
Actually very few if any people have gone broke winning that much money. Most of the lottery to broke stories are not huge powerball type jackpots. Typically they are under $20 million and then, yes, it is quite easy to imagine going broke. After all, people who buy lottery tickets aren't usually the best at managing money
Actually you are wrong.......Google broke athletes and you will find hundreds of stories of multi-million dollar people that smoked through huge fortunes. So whether gambling or being an athlete it surely happens.
Problem is in both cases the money wasn't earned by traditional methods, funded in the future by future earnings but rather a one shot deal. Once you can't replicate that "one shot" again and your spending has gotten out of control then you are in the debt spiral.
I personally knew 2 lottery winners (23 million and 86 million) both were flat broke within 10 years. The 23 million dollar winner didn't blow it on cars/houses but rather gave it away and bought thousands of dollars in lottery tickets trying to win a 3rd time! 86 million dollar guy smoked the fortune in about 7 years.....fleet of cars, bought a business he knew nothing about, he rented jets and had a major drug problem.
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