Many Nevada residents cross the California border to buy their tickets because Nevada doesn’t sell them. No one has matched all five white balls and one red Powerball to grab the jackpot since early November.
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“Someone may have 800 million reasons to be happy”, Maggard said.
It’s now estimated that the odds of cashing in the on hundreds of millions of dollars are one to 292 million.
The Virginia Lottery estimates sales of 6.9 million Powerball tickets in Virginia on Saturday alone, the day of the drawing.
Lottery officials say while there are no “lucky stores” that sell Ohio Lottery tickets, there are stores that sell the most winners, probably because they sell the most tickets.
At this rate, by the time of Saturday’s drawing, the pot will hit $900 million, a lottery spokeswoman said. Those figures are before federal and state taxes, which will eat up roughly half of the cash-option prize.
If the victor opts for the lump sum, Powerball will award the jackpot’s “cash value”, which is about $496 million.
Your odds increase with additional tickets, but it’s important to keep in mind how small they are to begin with.
Paula Hunt fills in Powerball numbers for a customer, Thursday, …
Powerball’s website helpfully provides a list of the odds and prizes for each of the possible outcomes.
This reality was underscored by research I undertook with Emily Haisley and Romel Mostafa (both then graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University), in which we studied how feelings of poverty affect lottery ticket purchases.
Powerball winners also have the option of collecting their prize money in annual payments, or an annuity. Powerball points out on their FAQ site that in the case of the annuity, the state lottery commission invests the cash sum tax-free, and you only pay taxes as you receive your annual payments, whereas with the cash payment, you have to pay the entirety of taxes all at once.
“We know the average American is quite financially illiterate”, Mitchell said.
Evidence shows that most people who make it to the top 1 percent of income earners usually don’t stay at the top for very long.
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“OK, that’s not good”, she said. “But on the other hand, you’ve protected your basic consumption needs”.
