OT Mega Million Jackpot now 1.6 Billion.

You could literally buy one ticket of every number combination possible. That is 300,000,000 combinations, and still double your money.

 

That's the good news.

Bad news is if you could feed a lottery machine at the HEB, 10 combinations/ticket every 5 seconds, it would take you 1,736 days to do every ticket for the 300,000,000 combinations.

Badder news, that doesn't include the much more onerous task of filling out 300,000,000 combinations on the slips to feed INTO the machine, probably taking about 30 seconds per, or over 1000 days for this task?

Of course, this is for one person doing all the work. And to be honest, I don't know the cost of each combination play --- is it $1 per, so you'd have to put out $300,000,000 ($600,000,000, see my edit below) to guarantee the win, tax deductible expense of course. Oh, and the $1.6 billion is the annuitized value; estimated cash value I believe is about $905 million. (Edit, just checked after posting, it's $2 per play, so parenthetical values in below text reflects $2 cost per ticket instead of $1).

So if you win the $905 million, less cash out of $300 (600) million, you'd net $605 ($305) million before income taxes, about 25-30%, so "take home" about $450 ($225) million.

BUT, if you could put together a team of hundreds of scratchers to get it done before the next drawing, and they ALL did their jobs right, and you'd win, you'd need to split winnings (or pay them some agreed upon rate up front).

Oh, and this assumes no one else wins along with you --- pretty sure the maximum prize is split among the total number of winning tickets.

I think I may buy $5 ($10) worth anyway.

Good luck to all who play!!

P.S., other numbers that might make one pause, assuming the machines take $100 bills (I don't know, but this should be a conservative assumption), you would need 3,000,000 quantity of $100 bills. Assuming each bill weighs 0.5 oz. (just a guess), you'd have to haul about 94,000 pounds of these out of a bank (which wouldn't have them anyway), and then have a bunch of college students wheelbarrow them into the HEB, .... just having fun with all of this. (Edit: I think I may be off on this, considering number of combinations per ticket [10?], you'd pay $20 per ticket of 10 combinations, or 5 tickets per $100 bill, so it may be 18,800 pounds of $100 bills.)

The huge numbers involved in all of this almost assuredly prevent even a professional gambling/investing (is there a difference between the two?) group from doing a guaranteed win.

 

That is way too much work, I think I'll skip all that and just buy the winning ticket.

 

Good call!!

 

I calculated the actual odds of winning. It isn't 300,000,000,000 to 1.

It's actually 344,266,863,333 to 1

 

So you're saying there's a chance!

 

You may have been right the first time, if this Washington Post analysis is correct:

How Mega Millions changed the odds to create a record-breaking $1.6 billion jackpot

"The odds of winning the jackpot are now 1 in 302,575,350."

 

If I win I'll buy an NFL team and give hornfans a lifetime suite on the 50 yd line. My first offer will go to Jerry Jones even if it would be pennies on the dollar for what the Cowboys are worth.

 

To keep this thread from being outcast to another board, I think the Horns' odds of making the CFP final four this year are much better than winning the Mega Millions.

 

If I win (without other winners, because if it's half a billion ef you guys), I'll procure a Hornfans suite at DKR and let Dion and/or Anne run the guest list (minus my family).

 

I think the odds of Texas winning the super bowl is better.

 

Odds of winning the lottery is 10 times more likely than blOwU not sucking.

 

Who would want to win that much money? I think it would totally screw your life. Don't get me wrong, I like money, but I would not want that much. You'd have people coming out the woodwork. Also, how screwed up would your kids be? There are qualities you learn via hard work. If I die, my kids get a pretty good chunk of change and I don;'t want them to have it until they have been out of school and had to prove themselves on their own. My 20 year old does not need several hundred thousand dollars. And I don't need a billion. An extra mil or 2 would be nice but I really think long term this much money is bad for many reasons.

 

I'd take that chance.

 

Wadster,

I fundamentally agree with your thoughts on this, and have the perfect solution.

After the dust is settled, taxes paid, "money in the bank", etc., figure out how much you think you might minimally need to live on, plus a reserve for major illness, unforseen weather catastrophe, etc., put that principal in a balanced set of funds, and literally, publicly, give all the rest away, right away, to one or more worthy charities.

For example, say you'd reasonably be able to live on $5,000 per month before income taxes, and would want a reserve of $200,000 for those unforseen events noted, you'd keep around $1,500,000.

Then donate all the rest to, say American Cancer Society, MD Anderson, St. Jude's Children's Hospital, UT athletics for a new basketball facility, etc., and then you can tell errbody: "HEY, I ain't got no more stinking money to give. Gave it all away."

P.S., thinking more about it, everybody would still hate you though, not giving them money to blow as they please.

Oh, well, I don't think it's anything we should lose sleep over fearing may happen to us.

 

Give it to HornFans, and let Dion own the internet.

 

Maybe it's easy because I've had a great job for 32 years and saved so in pretty good shape. I wouldn't move even if I had another few mil. I would like a smallish house on a lake in east Texas and stop working, but that's about it. I drive a 13 year old Lexus that I love outside of no Apple car play so don't even need a new car. What I've found living with very little in college to upper middle class now is once you can put food on the table, have a safe place to live, and can pay your basic bills money has zero to do with happiness quotient. Kids, family, friends are about 99% of that and money is 1%. Now if you can't pay basic living or don't have good healthcare, that's totally different.

 

All that money would almost certainly bring unwanted pain and hassle. You would have new friends and relatives daily that didn’t exist before, and there would be no way to make them happy. “Why did he/she get more than I did?” And many of those gifts to friends and family, rather than improving their lives, might have the opposite effect due to the disincentive nature of receiving a large sum of money.

You’d have charities crawling out of the woodwork, incessantly disrupting your life. If fact, if I won, one of my first announcements would be that any charity or organization that pursued me would immediately be disqualified to receive a gift.

I’d probably battle with my wife about how to disburse the money. She thinks that money has only an upside. I’m more of a “Money is the root of all evil” type of guy.

I’d take the money but I’m not sure that my life would be any better because of it.

 

Frick I forgot to buy a ticket.

 

I believe that winning a jackpot of even a fraction of this size would absolutely ruin one's life. It would dominate every aspect of life, from spare time, to friends and relatives. Nothing, absolutely would be the same.

 

BT, this is a work of art!

 

Some of you people ruined this thread.

 

So, you're saying there's a chance....

 

This.

 

Do the Horns play next week?

 

The Cash option for Tuesday's drawing is $904,900,000. After taxes (if you live in Texas) you still get a whopping $575,087,000... not bad

 

My wife could spend that in a week...

 

I would create a trust and then sign the winning ticket. It would be in the trust’s name. I would try to stay anonymous. Not sure if I could do that. Someone on here knows.

I lost a lot of money last year on a deal that went south. I worked on it for many years. I’m happier now without the money, and my future may be better too. I get to keep running my company and don’t have to work for the man.

They should make a movie about what happens to lottery winners. Matthew could star in it. I hear the average winner is broke in ten years.

 

Make a trust, get a team of experts far away from your city who are used to dealing with a lot of money and remain anonymous to almost everyone.

Give most of it away in the form of foundations that give off of the interest.

Figure how much you can live off comfortably without people knowing you radically changed anything except maybe you “work” by investing. There are a lot of miserable rich people so you got to avoid the temptation of living larger than you can handle.

 

Assuming a typical age of a HornFans poster is 30, life expectancy of 85, remaining life of 50 years +/-.

Don't even need to whip out the HP11C, the $575,087,000 divided by 50 (ignores ANY annual earnings which would be substantial), is approximately $12,000,000 per year, or $1,000,000 per month. Every month. For 50 years.