The hottest ticket in town these days is Mega Millions, now that the jackpot in the United States' biggest multi-state lottery game has reached $200 million.
There was no jackpot winner in Friday's Mega Millions drawing, so Americans woke up to a jackpot that's bursting at an estimated $200 million for the Tuesday, September 13, 2005 drawing.
The cash option for the Tuesday jackpot is estimated at $123 million. Players can see how much they would win after taxes at USA Mega (http://www.usamega.com/mega-millions-jackpot.htm).
A total of 1,234,385 tickets from coast to coast won prizes in the Friday, September 9 Mega Millions drawing. The winning numbers were: 15-28-43-51-52 and the Mega Ball number was 11.
The Texas Megaplier was 3.
Eight tickets were just shy of hitting the estimated $172 million jackpot. They did so by matching the first five numbers and only missing the Mega Ball number, and each won a prize of $250,000.
Those second-prize tickets were sold in Illinois (1), Michigan (1), New Jersey (1), New York (2), Ohio (1) and Texas (2).
This jackpot has been growing since July 23, when Mega Millions had its most recent jackpot winner. The jackpot has now rolled 13 times without a winner. The odds of winning the jackpot are approximately one in 176 million.
The odds of winning any of the Mega Millions prizes are approximately 1 in 40.
Mega Millions holds the record for the largest jackpot in U.S. history. On May 9, 2000, the jackpot for the Big Game (the forerunner of Mega Millions) grew to $363 million. There were two winning tickets in that drawing: one in Michigan and one in Illinois.
i already have my tickets.
I played this morning ($4 worth). At the same store I bought $10 of gas at $3.429.
I remember when that jackpot was that high, I drove 2 hours up RT 23 to a Michigan truck stop/restaurant just north of the state line to buy tickets for myself and some former co-workers. The place hired extra help that week just to sell lottery tickets.
There were two lines over 200 people long that ran though out the front part of the restaurant and into the parking lot and I had to wait about an hour to get my cards run. The other line was a little faster but it was only selling QPs. One of the news station from Columbus had a TV crew up there to cover the madness for an evening news story.
Now that's Ohio has joined MegaMillions and I can buy tickets at the local BP, Shell or SpeedWay, I have to remember to set aside 10 mins before the 10:45PM cut off to buy tickets. Has $200M lose its appeal or is it just too easy to buy tickets for it to be exciting anymore? Good luck lottery players.
RJOh
I bought two draws worth last week, figuring it would go atleast until Tuesday. Bought last week, just to cover myself. I usually like to see it hit around $20M Cash, but this time around, I would like to see it set a record. (What is the record?)
I feel lucky! Have tickets for me and Mom. $2 per ticket good for the next 4 draws.
There's a remote chance of winner on Tuesday, only remote because it's Tuesday. Friday will definately see a winner if it rolls on Tuesday. With California seeing their biggest jackpot right now, expect A LOT of tickets to be sold there.
Imagine this. There is someone out there who probably is broke or going through a rough time with money. Probably someone who has been poor there entire life. Then with just the purchase of a ticket they become richer then they ever dreamed of being and having everything they could imagine, private jets, million dollar mansions and vacation homes, exotic 100k trips a staff of servants, bentleys by the dozen, unlimited $ shopping trips to the finest stores in the world . cool cool cool. What I would do if I won!
BTW hi everyone, I'm new!
Hi iwonabigone. Welcome to LP. Here's hoping you get the opportunity to wallow in some bucks until you tire of it.
I was just looking over the annuities vs lump on the USA Mega site. Although I think it's a bad thing for them to advertise the annuity as the jackpot amount, I think when things get to this level a person who believes he stands a middling chance of living another 20-30 years couldn't really go wrong by accepting that means of payment.
Works out 5.5 M per year plus change after taxes, which ought to be enough income to cover the needs of your average frugal person. The amount saved in taxes is something to consider, and probably most winners won't end up investing it all, so this way a young person would have a lot of years to make regrettable decisions, learn, and bounce back the next or next or next years.
It might even be worth something to not have to think about it anymore and submerge one's self in the nuts an bolts of all the financialism. There ought to be better things in life for a lottery jackpot winner, thinks I, than worrying about money.
That thing's climbing fairly impressively. Might turn out about a hundred players hit it on the same draw, which would cut my little logic-session off at the knees.
Jack
I understand the annuity concept for the lotteries, but for the players it just doens't make sense. It all had to do with the Time Value of money. Money now is worth then more money in the future. No matter how big the annuity payments are you should take the lump sum.
Brad
Didn't some one recently post information about the IRS and Annuity payments; where, if you die, the IRS wants all the tax money in one big lump? That part would make me leary about Annuity, especially on jackpots of the current size. That would be setting up a situation of paying the IRS and state a lump sum, and then the family still paying annually. With lump sum, of say $100M, I am sure I could find adequate help to manage the finances, with minimum imput from me. There are a few people I have repeatidly trusted with my life, for over forty years, I'm sure they will be there for the management effort.
I understand the annuity concept for the lotteries, but for the players it just doens't make sense. It all had to do with the Time Value of money. Money now is worth then more money in the future. No matter how big the annuity payments are you should take the lump sum.
Brad
Depends entirely on individual priorities, expectations, and ambitions, seems to me.
What you say is certainly true of a lot of players, probably all players when the annuity payments are, say, a million a year or less.
But when it gets so the annuity payments are five, six million a year or more, the picture changes. It's not difficult for me to imagine a body of players out there who would feel they don't need more money than 5 m a year to play around with, will never need more than that. Most players will have never seen more than a tiny fraction of that in any year of their lives.
What, a person might legitimately ask, is the point of having more money at hand than that person believes can be squandered any given year? If there's enough at hand to squander, why worry about it at all? Why not just lean back, wallow in wealth, squander each 5 m in its own time, and let the bean counters worry about whether it increases, decreases, or whatever? If the object is to score your life by how much money you possessed on a single occasion, then you certainly have a point. But if the object is to not have to worry about money, but to live as you wish, I think the point's to be made in favor of just taking the annuity.
Just another way of looking at things.
Jack
I agree unless you are an idiot and don't know anything about money and in two years you are broke again... it happens all the time.
When I win the mega millions I want to buy Eddie Murphy's house here in Granite Bay California....listed at 10 Million but he will be good if he gets 1/2 that amount because houses don't sell in Sacramento or Granite bay for 10 million not even for Eddie Murphy's house.
I agree unless you are an idiot and don't know anything about money and in two years you are broke again... it happens all the time.
When I win the mega millions I want to buy Eddie Murphy's house here in Granite Bay California....listed at 10 Million but he will be good if he gets 1/2 that amount because houses don't sell in Sacramento or Granite bay for 10 million not even for Eddie Murphy's house.
I'm betting those folks weren't thinking of themselves as idiots while they were bankrupting themselves, same as you and I wouldn't think of ourselves as idiots, no matter what we happened to be doing at the time. That idiocy thing is amazingly easy to recognize in the behavior of others, and in ourselves in retrospect. But it shows up wearing cammies most of the time when we're experiencing it real-time.
But no one who'd wish to own Eddie Murphy's house could ever be described that way, most likely.
Jack
Unless you are really bad at managing money, take the lump sum.
The odds of winning are still to high for even $200 million.