What If You Won the Powerball Lottery?

January 15, 2016

As I type this, the Powerball lottery jackpot stands at $1.1 billion. Yes…that’s BILLION with a B: 1,000,000,000 – nine zeroes. As a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER(TM) professional, I can attest to the fact that that’s a whole bunch of money! It’s fun to listen to the radio and hear what people would do with that kind of windfall. As with almost everything, there is both good and bad to what could be viewed by most people as an all good scenario.  Continue reading “What If You Won the Powerball Lottery?”

How Would You Take the Powerball Winnings?

January 14, 2016

What would you do if you won yesterday’s $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot? Before you start thinking about how to spend a billion and a half dollars, understand that you won’t get it all at once. Instead, it’s paid out in 30 installments over 29 years. If you want the money now, you only get $930 million. Then there’s taxes. Continue reading “How Would You Take the Powerball Winnings?”

One Ticket Is All It Takes!

May 21, 2013

The record Powerball jackpot has spurred many people to race to their local lottery outlet for the chance of winning big.  If you don’t buy a ticket, you have a zero chance of winning, but if you buy at least one ticket, the odds of winning the grand prize are one in 175,223,510 – according to the Powerball website.  You have a much better chance of being struck by lightning, about a 1 in 10,000 chance over your lifetime.  (But don’t worry, CNN quotes the odds of dying from that lightning strike are actually 1 in 3,000,000.) Continue reading “One Ticket Is All It Takes!”

Powerball: How to Cash in When You Don’t Win

April 09, 2012

My son reminded me that if you don’t buy a ticket, the odds of winning the Powerball lottery were zero.  He also said, “Someone has to win you know.”  He does have a point and that line of thinking is shared by many people who are in a frenzy buying lottery tickets even though the odds of winning a mega-jackpot are 175.7 million to one. I didn’t play the Powerball but I have to admit that I did buy into the California lottery pool with a bunch of my co-workers only because if they DID win, I wouldn’t want to be left behind. Continue reading “Powerball: How to Cash in When You Don’t Win”