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Will you be buying ticket/s for tuesdays $252 million Mega Millions drawing?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 13 31.0%
  • No, and I live in a Mega Millions state.

    Votes: 11 26.2%
  • I would if I lived in one of the 12 states.

    Votes: 8 19.0%
  • I wouldn't even if I lived in one of the 12 states.

    Votes: 10 23.8%

  • Total voters
    42
  • Poll closed .
Odds of winning: 1 in 175,711,536. It's like having a cluster of about 3,888 baseball stadiums of 45,000 seats each, all packed with people, and having a bird fly over all the stadiums and randomly drop a slip of paper at some point. The person that catches it wins the jackpot.

I'm very clear about the math, and I am determined to win. The key part of the odds is the "1."



I deducted federal tax too. And the lump sum is all the cash that they actually have. The advertised jackpot amount is what it would add up to if they paid you over 26 years because they'd invest the money and give it to you along with interest.


Or the bird poops, and hits somebody, because theres a good chance the wind picks up the slip of paper and carries it away, so nobody wins.
 
So I was right about the 25% federal tax.

Don't count on it.

They might withhold 25%, but if your prize is in the millions, your tax obligation is much higher. The way I read that FAQ, the 25% tax applies to prizes $5,000 or more - the 25% rate is much more reasonable.

If they only withhold 25% on a $100 million-plus payout, you're gonna be hit with penalties for not prepaying enough tax.

Think of lottery prizes as regular earned income from a job.
 
It's impossible for anyone who's taken even basic statistics to buy a lottery ticket.

The fact that so many do says something.

Just look at it this way. If you bought every single ticket at standard price, you be guaranteed to win. And yet you would lose money, since the price of the tickets would be more than what you made, even before taxes.
 
It's impossible for anyone who's taken even basic statistics to buy a lottery ticket.

The fact that so many do says something.

Just look at it this way. If you bought every single ticket at standard price, you be guaranteed to win. And yet you would lose money, since the price of the tickets would be more than what you made, even before taxes.

... but nobody is buying all the tickets, and yet the one that wins is in one persons hand when the numbers are drawn.
 
Don't count on it.

They might withhold 25%, but if your prize is in the millions, your tax obligation is much higher. The way I read that FAQ, the 25% tax applies to prizes $5,000 or more - the 25% rate is much more reasonable.

If they only withhold 25% on a $100 million-plus payout, you're gonna be hit with penalties for not prepaying enough tax.

Exactly. They take 25% to make sure they get something out of you, but your still obligated up to the federal maximum. Then if your unlucky enough, your going to get hit with state taxes on top of that.

But I'd still take it ;)
 
It's impossible for anyone who's taken even basic statistics to buy a lottery ticket.

The fact that so many do says something.

Just look at it this way. If you bought every single ticket at standard price, you be guaranteed to win. And yet you would lose money, since the price of the tickets would be more than what you made, even before taxes.

When you buy a lottery ticket for $1 you are not really buying a decent chance to win anything--you're really buying a "fantasy" until the drawing. I bet almost everyone on this thread thinks about what their life would be like with all that money. Such a dream is greatly enhanced when you have a slightly greater than zero chance of winnning. :)
 
It's impossible for anyone who's taken even basic statistics to buy a lottery ticket.

You're omitting one very important clause in your above statement:

"Unless you're dealing with life-changing sums of money."

I understand statistics perfectly well for this application. I know the odds of winning are 170 million or so to one. I know the payout is 252 million or so. I know the expected rate of return is more than a dollar; so in this case, taxes aside, it's actually a solid payoff.

The big thing your statement overlooks is that the $5 I spent on tickets is relatively small to me; it isn't going to change my life at all to part with it. Winning the jackpot would change my life. In that sense, statistics becomes only part of the consideration.
 
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