Mega Millions Lottery and some fun math!

[Evolution1980]

Mega Millions tickets are sold in California, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Washington state.
The jackpot is $370,000,000.00 (370 million).
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070307/...llions_jackpot

(I'm doing some fuzzy math...I don't know exacts, but the numbers I've chosen shouldn't be all THAT far off base. If anything, they will tend to the LOW side of payments. Actual payments would likely be higher assuming a single winner.)

Let's do some math, shall we?
They say the payout option, which I'm assuming is a lump sum if chosen, is 221 million before taxes.
Let's just figure at a HIGH, the tax rate on that is 40%. So, that leaves you with 60% of $221M or...$132,600,000.
That is the lump sum. If someone opts for the yearly payouts, that number is considerably higher. But let's just use that as our number for yearly payouts over a 26 yr period, which what I believe is the length of time. So you're going to divide $132.6M dollars by 26 years. (and again, this is AFTER taxes. Your NET payments)

That's equal to $5,100,000 / yr. for the next 26 years of your life.
Now let's break that down to daily payments. $5.1M divided by 365 days = $13,972.60 PER DAY
Divide that by 24 hours and you are making $582.20 PER HOUR
Divided by 60 minutes per hour, equals $9.70 PER MINUTE
Let's round that up to $10 for sake of conversation and since I've been rounding down from the beginning.

Think about that. For EVERY MINUTE of your life for the next 26 YEARS!!! you are going to be given free and clear $10.

You take a 15 minute cat nap? You'll wake up with $150 in your pocket that wasn't there before.
You're getting paid $50 just to sit on the crapper for 5 minutes.

You could leave your house with no money, and by the time you got to the grocery store check out line, you could have enough money to buy groceries for two weeks or more. Just reading this message and then deciding to forward it on will net you about $40.

When you sleep tonight for 7 hours or so, you'll wake up over $4000 richer.

For fun, let's look at this yet another way using 7 hours of average nightly sleep. We'll use that $4000 figure as our nightly payments just for sleeping. Assuming you sleep every day of the year (most people do), that $4000 for 365 nights of sleep, equals $1.46M dollars per year just for SLEEPING! Over the next 26 years, while you are sleeping, you'll have been paid just shy of $38,000,000 dollars. For Sleeping...

And remember, this is a very modest estimate. If someone actually took the annual payments from the get-go, the $/minute pay out is much greater.

[koolaid117]

Originally Posted by Evolution1980

Mega Millions tickets are sold in California, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Washington state.
The jackpot is $370,000,000.00 (370 million).
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070307/...llions_jackpot

(I'm doing some fuzzy math...I don't know exacts, but the numbers I've chosen shouldn't be all THAT far off base. If anything, they will tend to the LOW side of payments. Actual payments would likely be higher assuming a single winner.)

Let's do some math, shall we?
They say the payout option, which I'm assuming is a lump sum if chosen, is 221 million before taxes.
Let's just figure at a HIGH, the tax rate on that is 40%. So, that leaves you with 60% of $221M or...$132,600,000.
That is the lump sum. If someone opts for the yearly payouts, that number is considerably higher. But let's just use that as our number for yearly payouts over a 26 yr period, which what I believe is the length of time. So you're going to divide $132.6M dollars by 26 years. (and again, this is AFTER taxes. Your NET payments)

That's equal to $5,100,000 / yr. for the next 26 years of your life.
Now let's break that down to daily payments. $5.1M divided by 365 days = $13,972.60 PER DAY
Divide that by 24 hours and you are making $582.20 PER HOUR
Divided by 60 minutes per hour, equals $9.70 PER MINUTE
Let's round that up to $10 for sake of conversation and since I've been rounding down from the beginning.

Think about that. For EVERY MINUTE of your life for the next 26 YEARS!!! you are going to be given free and clear $10.

You take a 15 minute cat nap? You'll wake up with $150 in your pocket that wasn't there before.
You're getting paid $50 just to sit on the crapper for 5 minutes.

You could leave your house with no money, and by the time you got to the grocery store check out line, you could have enough money to buy groceries for two weeks or more. Just reading this message and then deciding to forward it on will net you about $40.

When you sleep tonight for 7 hours or so, you'll wake up over $4000 richer.

For fun, let's look at this yet another way using 7 hours of average nightly sleep. We'll use that $4000 figure as our nightly payments just for sleeping. Assuming you sleep every day of the year (most people do), that $4000 for 365 nights of sleep, equals $1.46M dollars per year just for SLEEPING! Over the next 26 years, while you are sleeping, you'll have been paid just shy of $38,000,000 dollars. For Sleeping...

And remember, this is a very modest estimate. If someone actually took the annual payments from the get-go, the $/minute pay out is much greater.

I like where you are going with this because I did pretty much the same thing, but the lump sum payout is what the lottery would have to invest now to make the total payments over the 26 years. I believe I heard they were splitting the lump amount.

If they take the option for the yearly payout the overall total is more, but the yearly total is much less than the lump sum. According to the Megamillions website, Megamillions winner could expect about $38,500 per million before taxes, which on $110.5 million would be $4,254,250 before taxes, which would be $2,552,550 after about 40% tax. Still not a bad payday. Which still averages out to about $4.86 per minute for 26 years.

I would take any amount though!