In the words of the wrongly convicted Andy Dufresne, “Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” I think this is how many of us feel when standing in line to buy a Mega Millions ticket, a ticket that could potentially win us the $667 million jackpot (and counting), the highest in the history of the game.
The jackpot has grown so gigantic because the last people to win the Mega Millions jackpot were 11 co-workers who hauled in a combined $543 million on July 24. The Mega Millions jackpots start out at $40 million and roll over if no one wins the jackpot, which posts odds of winning at 1 in 302,575,350.
According to ABC, if there is a winner and he/she/they opt for the lump sum cash value, they will net about $380 million before taxes, and like $23 bucks after taxes.
If you guys don’t win the Mega Millions, DON’T FRET! The Powerball jackpot for Wednesday’s drawing is up to $345 million. Your odds of winning this one are nearly a sure thing, at 1 in 292 million.
The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot AND the Powerball jackpot, which is a combined haul of $999 million, is a favorable 1 in 88 quadrillion. You can’t even type this number into your standard TI-83 calculators, so the number is 88 thousand trillion, or the numeral 1 followed by 15 zeros, according to the Allstate Data Science Team.
Go pick yourself up a couple lottery tickets before the Mega Millions drawing on Tuesday night and the Powerball drawing Wednesday night. If no one wins, the Mega Millions draws occur twice a week on every Tuesday and Friday and the Powerball draws occur twice a week on every Wednesday and Saturday.
[h/t ABC]