Ulog 53: Mega Million Mania

Wow! The world seems to be opening up to so many possibilities. Why? The Mega Million Lottery Jackpot has reached $1.6 billion dollars. That’s Billion with a B.

The marketing surrounding this event has been incredible. Even though the lottery commission advertises it as $1.6B, if you win the jackpot by yourself and take the cash price, it’s more like $906 million dollars. You have to pay taxes on it so that takes another 40%. So what you really end up approximately $550 million dollars. Still a lot of money but not billionaire status yet.

I’ve been invite to join so many lottery pool from friends, family and colleagues. I think it’s a hassle. However, I don’t want to be left out. What if they won and I didn’t join the pot. They will be laughing about it for the rest of their lives. So I don’t want to be left out of the cold by them. So instead I join every lottery pot that I got invited to. That ends being lots of money here and there.

With the advent of smart phones, there are many variations of the lottery pool. The standard one has been “put $10 and we split the pot evenly by the numbers of players.” That’s the easiest one to monitor.

There is the “buy $10 worth of tickets, post the picture, and keep track of your winning. “ That one is supposed to rub each person’s luck on the group. Who knows.

I’ve been buying a massive amount of lottery tickets in the past few days. There are things that I think I can do with that $550 Million Dollars that I wouldn’t have otherwise be able to do by working a 9-5 job for the rest of my life. It will afford me the opportunity to travel the world and help lots of people.

The excitement has mainly centered around the Mega Million jackpot. But another big lottery is also looming for the Powerball. It’s currently sitting at a mere $620 Million dollars. I guess once you have reached a billion, everything else seems insignificant. That drawing will happen on Wednesday while the Mega Million jackpot will be tomorrow, Tuesday. If no one win, I am pretty sure it will be rolled over to approximately $2.5 Billion dollars, if not more.

I have heard on the news that at this point, 75% of the combination of numbers has been taken. That means only 25% of the numbers are left. However one has to realize that 25% of 300 million combinations still leave lots of combinations to be correct. So the chance of the jackpot rolling over is real.

For now, I am going to bed and dream about the big one. To you, good night and don’t let the bedbugs bite!