am i all paid up or delinquent.
the multi state representation just means I have no idea when they say the winning ticket was sold in !
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You are at $6. I’m just being vigilant. Both are approaching $200M CV and PB is doing Monday draws starting next week.
Diversification is key in any sound investment strategy conducted by rational, mean-variance efficient investors. QED and 
.
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BIG MONEY!!! NO WHAMMIES!!! 
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Hopefully, they don’t advocate this method for family planning…
Blast from the past. Turns out Powerball didn’t expand and Idaho didn’t pull out.
BTW, did you make that joke based on Idaho passing the Texas abortion law?
Anybody win?
No sir! Jackpot now over $1B
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I was thinking the same thing - but I am HORRIBLE at meme’s - and putting this into my protocol of getting a picture out here just seemed like too much work! - So thank you @arthurItas
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Love these quotes from an article I found where they interviewed an economist.
Matheson said a winner who elects to receive earnings via an annuity can expect to yield a bit over $600 million — but they’d be joining the nation’s highest income-tax bracket of between 35 percent and 37 percent. He said a winner should also expect that they aren’t alone because big jackpots of round numbers draw more players, which means an increased chance of splitting the pot.
It’s possible, he said, that if there are two winners of a $1 billion jackpot, they each could net as low as $185 million after taxes.
But, let’s be real, he said: “I wouldn’t shed too many tears for a person who walks away with $185 million.”
I think he meant take the cash not the annuity. Then this next one is correct though a bit strange. Seems the chances of winning by buying a ticket are infinitely greater than the chances of winning without buying a ticket. 
“The chances of me winning are almost exactly the same whether I buy a ticket or not,” he said.
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As bad as the chances of winning are, they could still be a lot worse.
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It is also helping the top line number that interest rates are up so much. CV was fairly recently as much as 70% of Annuity amount. Now it is down to less than 50%.
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- $1.586 billion, Powerball, Jan. 13, 2016 (three tickets, from California, Florida, Tennessee)
- $1.537 billion, Mega Millions, Oct. 23, 2018 (one ticket, from South Carolina)
- $1.337 billion, Mega Millions, July 29, 2022 (one ticket, from Illinois)
— We’re sitting here 11/2/2022 $1.2B PB - $1.05 billion, Mega Millions, Jan. 22, 2021 (one ticket, from Michigan)
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Given today’s high interest rates, would the smart course of action for the winner be to take the annuity option and then in a couple of years when interest rates come down sell the remaining stream of payments?
I very much doubt it. On a jackpot of $1 billion, $600 million sounds like the sum of the after-tax annuity payments. The cash option would be way less.
If you had 37% withheld for federal taxes and 3% for state that would be precisely $600 million.
The jackpot is advertised as the sum of the annuity payments. Makes the number sound bigger. I believe it’s 40 payments over 39 years (as you get the first payment immediately). And to make the jackpot sound even bigger, it’s an increasing annuity. I think the payments go up by a fixed 4 or 5% per year.
But at the end of the day, when you read the fine print, it’s the cash value that’s fixed and then when the prize is claimed, insurance companies bid on the annuity and they pick the one with the highest payout. So the $1 billion might actually be more or less than $1 billion based on what the insurers bid. It’s an estimate. So when interest rates are higher the jackpots will sound bigger for the same cash value.
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Insurance companies bid on the annuity. They’re making a margin when the lottery commission buys the annuity on the winner’s behalf and they’ll make another margin if you sell it back. And they are using actuaries and financial professionals to determine what they expect interest rates to do in both cases when setting the rates.
So most likely… no. At least not on Powerball and Mega Millions. You should probably pick an option and stick with it. Unless you think you’re smarter than the folks working for the insurance companies. Significant changes to the tax code could have an impact too. 37% is relatively low. There’s something to be said for paying that now before it goes up.
Now I have seen state lotteries where the cash value is automatically half of the sum of the annuity payments. Which means you should absolutely be looking at interest rates (and tax considerations) to determine which is better.
I guess I was also looking at the next paragraph where he says with 2 winners you could net as low as 185 M. I would probably agree with you that the 600 is probably the annuity but the 185 would have to be the CV right? But why would he conflate those two numbers.
Now that I think about it, I probably should post that in the innumeracy thread and probably blame it on the reporter since the economist probably understands the time value of money issue here.
Yeah, at first I was thinking $285 M would be plausible for the annuity, since it’s the CV that’s fixed and the annuity is estimated… if the estimate was off then a jackpot might be off by as much as 5%?
But $185 M has got to be half the CV after taxes. (If it’s right, anyway.)