Need some extra spending money this holiday season? Would $207 million be enough?
That's the jackpot for Friday night's Mega Millions drawing, if a single ticket matches all six numbers in the multi-state lottery.
The Mega Millions jackpot has been climbing steadily without a big winner since Oct. 21, when Mark Staffa of Rockmart won $42 million.
Staffa, a software engineer, said he planned to use the windfall to help his parents retire and to travel the world.
If this turns out to be your lucky day and you need advice on how to spend your winnings, you might want to give Robert Harris a call.
The 47-year-old iron worker from the tiny southeast Georgia town of Portal won a $275 million Mega Millions jackpot in February.
Harris chose to collect his winnings in a lump sum of $164 million before taxes.
Mega Millions is played in Georgia, Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, Washington state and California.
Hmm, I think I'd rather give the winner of the 196M jackpot from Ohio a call... Oh right, I can't! I'll just have to call the law firm that claimed it for the winner.
"Need some extra spending money this holiday season? would $207 million be enough?"
Don't you just love the way lottery officials twist reality? First off, $207 million is the total annnuity package paid over 26 years. The cash option is $141 million of which an immediate 25% is dedicated to Federal taxes while another 10% needs to be put aside for future payments to uncle sam and lets not forget the states cut.
Using Georgia as an example, your actual lottery payout if you are the sole winner is $97 million...don't forget that you will probably owe another $14 million when you file your federal taxes as you will be in the 35% bracket.
In reality, your true net payout is more like $83 million...not that I or anyone else would complain but I just get sick and tired off these fictitious inflated numbers.
Advertising the annuity jackpot is a marketing strategy to make people think that the jackpot is really 207 rather than advertising it as it really is. The lottery is a buisness just like anyother.
The higher advertised payout causes more people to play thus bringing the jackpot even higher. The advertising works for the players benefit.
I don't think it really has any benefit. Very few people take the annuity. And really that is just an arbitrary number. That numbers is assuming interest rates stay the same over a 26 year period. That is not going to happen. So really that number means nothing. I don't understand why people still take the annuity these days after they started giving the cash option. The cash option is the only number that should be considered.
Brad
Just so they know....I won't be consulting previous winners for financial advice....thankyouverymuch....I have my own advisors....
It's exciting, and nerve racking because I have a feeling it will be won by someone tonight. I'm jealous already! I know, I know...shouldn't be jealous..but I can't help it.
I'm getting my tickets tonight. I usually buy only $1....$5 if the jackpot is big. But tonight, I'm buying $10 and throwing caution to the wind.
I'm not doing the qp's tonight..though I can say only 1 line of my 10 is numbers that mean something to me. The other 9?...go ahead and laugh....I got real bored last night and insomnia got the better of me so I spent the time to cut up 1 sheet of copy paper into squares a little smaller than a quarter and took a green (money) marker and wrote 1-56 for one set (white balls) and 1-46 the other set (gold ball). I put them into 2 different containers and started drawing my numbers. I figure it could add a little fun to it by announcing each number lol so thats how I got my other lines.
Hey...not too much different from the machine. Though the machine has been giving me number combos 20 and higher when I buy $3 or less. The singles I've been buying have been like 27 and higher. I wanted to just try something different.
Hope everyone bought their tickets! And I hope you didn't go overboard!
GOOD LUCK YA'll!
Sounds like as good of a system as I've read about lately.Me?I bought a quick pick in Illinois.
Hey that's nothing to laugh at. It's as good as any rng. When I lived in IN and played PB, I took pennies and put masking tape on them and numbered them and would draw them for my numbers. Obviously I never won much, but that was before I had a computer with the internet.
So....... now I keep track of numbers on excel files, research, pick the very best numbers to play and...... still lose. LOL.
Sometimes I think keeping it simple is the best way. I used LP's rng for my numbers tonight.
Can you imagine what would happen to LP if the eventual winner claimed their prize and said that they got their numbers from LP's rng? Think membership might jump a little? LOL.
Good luck tonight.
I agree!
I have actually done that before when it was "The Big Game". I've read on the post one time that you pay to play, and if you win, its an added bonus, or something like that. So you might as well have the most fun while picking your numbers. I actually go on eBay and pick out all the cars I would like to buy, and use the last two digits of their item number to play in the lottery. Aside from the numerous mechanical pickers, I also created a random number generator in Microsoft Excel to pick numbers without duplicates. I create them for fun, haha!
Of course it has a benefit. The bigger the jackpot, the bigger the sales. Most people don't know the cash value and some don't even know there's any difference at all. Anyone who doesn't play until it gets to 50, 100 or 200 million and doesn't know that the cash value is really 30, 60, or 120 million is suckered into playing for games they otherwise wouldn't be playing.
Other than being misleading, the annuity value is real. It's a guaranteed payout, regardless of what happens to interest rates.