Let the Frenzy Re-Commence

Yes, I bought a ticket for that silly fantasy-indulging game for January 9.  One ticket.  I rarely buy lottery tickets in the first place and I don't normally play Powerball because it galls me to put out $2 to be disappointed yet again.  But, I did – and I was.  Disappointed, that is.

But then, so was everyone else who expected to win over $900 million.

When I looked this morning at the gaming site's main page, I saw 1.3.  Despite what I knew to be the case, it seemed so paltry.  Then, my coffee-deprived brain took in the word 'billion' and put the 8 zeroes after the 3 and it became

$1,300,000,000.  

Yeah, that was better.

Now, try and keep in mind that's the total amount to be received if you take it as a 30-year annuity payout.  That's $43.3 million a year, before taxes, over the next 30 years.  If you're thinking you won't last that long and you don't want your estate to have to deal with it, or think the financial entity that makes those payments won't last that long, or you're just impatient and want it all NOW, the lump sum payout, again before taxes, is $806 million.  Regardless of which option is taken, it's more than most make and live on in a lifetime.

I keep bringing up taxes.  The IRS and the state where you live will come for their piece of your lottery pie first and you have no choice but to allow them to cut and serve themselves a slice. Between them, they're going to take about a third of the pie, give or take a piece of crust or dollop of filling.  That means you would net and have to survive on approximately $530 million as a lump sum or $28.5 million a year as a 30-year annuity payment.  You might be able to whittle the tax numbers a little with some savvy financial maneuvering, but the reality is that you don't get to play with the whole amount regardless of what you do.

I haven't even discussed the odds of winning because that's not what fuels any lottery game.  What fuels it is the dream of a better life beyond expectation and no one wants to hear that their chances of winning are closer to none than slim.

So, let the Powerball ticket buying insanity begin again.  By Wednesday, the amount to win will be higher than today's $1.3 billion.  Will someone win it?  Who knows?  I was sure that with the amount of people playing and the amount of tickets they were buying, every combination of numbers would have been played by Saturday's drawing.  I was wrong, so apparently not all the combinations of numbers and red ball numbers were played.  Who would have thought.

I was also sure that I wouldn't win and I was right.  Will I buy a ticket for Wednesday's drawing?  Yes.  Just one because it still galls me to pay $2 to be disappointed.  But despite the 17 billion to 1 odds, for $2 even I still can dream big.

Good luck to all.