Actually, I would gladly take the annuity rather than the lump sum, even though the first year I would only get around 12 million (after taxes). BTW, I believe that you will get taxed based on your place of residence, and not the place you bought the ticket.
Indeed, you have to claim your prize at the state lottery agency that issued the ticket, regardless where you are domiciled. Which affects the anonymity provisions if any, as well as the tax witholdings – you then later figure out to what extent the different tax situations balance out and if you are owed any refund on that.
I won 8 dollars with my ticket last night. I may spend it all in one place.
You need to think bigger. The entire Straight Dope Message Board is probably just a couple of computer servers in an air conditioned closet in Chicago.
Do you have any idea how much work it would take to fill out entries for every single combination? You can’t just take easy pick 300 million times. You have to have a plan to fill out every single one of those tickets with every single combination. Now, the one thing you have in your favor may be that you can do this all well ahead of time, assuming that the entry slip’s format doesn’t change while you finish the task and then wait for the jackpot to become high enough.
If you could fill out one entry form in 6 seconds, then it would take 30 million minutes, or a half-million hours, or around 20,833 days, or 57 years. If we assume that you’re going to want this done in the next 10 years, and you can only spend 1/3 of the day on this, that’s 18 people that you’re going to have to wrangle into doing this. Do you really want to have that many people responsible for following the plan?
You also have to consider that the jackpot might be split, as well as the present cash value of the annuity that you’d be paid. Taxes are a concern as well, but for that you at least have the fact that gambling losses are deductible. To take advantage of that you’ll have to take the cash up front though, unless you plan on running more of these schemes for the next 30 years. State income taxes probably aren’t that bad unless you live in NY or CA, but are also something you have to consider. I don’t recommend doing this scheme if you live in Michigan though, as gambling losses are not deductible, so that’s 4.25% of your winnings gone; at least for Federal you only pay the 37% or whatever on your net win is.
This doesn’t take into account the time it would take to have someone run them through the machine, as well as acquiring all the entry slips. You might be able to have a store (or 20) that sells lottery be part of your scheme so that they can order all the entry slips and have the machines available to run your slips.
I suppose you might be able to program a machine to do all the marking of the entry forms, and make many copies to get through faster, but that would be a big capital investment in hardware and software that would eat into your winnings, and those costs might not be deductible.
Are there not ways to play multiple numbers at once? They call it system tickets in Germany. And you can print them with a computer which you can program to go systematically through the permutations without leaving any one out.
The problem would be paying at the lottery shop: there I see the bottleneck. The best thing for this heist would be to buy the lottery shop (which in Germany gets a fixed amount of every bet, so it would in and of itself pay handsomely to buy one to pull this off).
Or you do it on-line (link to the German betting official portal, in German).
To be clear: we do not have those billion dollar jackpots here, and the odds in the German system (6 numbers chosen out of 49 plus a 0 to 9 extra number) are 1 in 139,838,160.
ETA: Lottery gains are tax free in Germany. But taxed at 25% in Swizzerland. Choose wisely were and when to play.
There could be? I don’t know. My entire knowledge of how to play it here is 30 years old since it’s only from when my parents played it when I was a kid. In the 90s you definitely had to fill out the paper slips, and that always was the issue when people contemplating playing all combinations.
Here’s a video explaining the odds, and why the plan wouldn’t work out. Can You Just Buy All Lottery Numbers And Win For Sure? - YouTube
It was tried in Virginia, back in '92 when the state had its own lottery, and the odds were only 1 in 7 million. A private consortium bought most of the numbers, and won $20 million. They bent the rules buying the tickets, but were ruled not to have broken them. WashPost link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/03/10/australians-luck-out-in-va-lottery/cbbfbd0c-0c7d-4faa-bf55-95bd6590dc70/
Nowadays, with large interstate lotteries that have much longer odds, the math is even less in favor of a “buy every number” scheme.
Also, there is no guarantee that even if you were able miraculously to every single combination possible in time for this lottery, you would be the only one to pick the winning combination.
I’m serious when I say I wouldn’t want to win more than enough to give me $30M as a lump sum.
In that case, pick the annuity.
I know! We bought a ticket, because, well, last week the odds were 1 in 302,575,350, but now they’re 1 in 302,575,350!
Note in the article:
“Though lottery officials insist that trying to buy out the lottery is an unwise investment, last month they instituted rules designed to discourage block purchases in the future.”
I’ve always assumed that this kind of thing is the case. The last thing that the lottery officials want is people to think they have no chance to win because syndicates buying (almost) every number are always winning. Most of the funds come from individual people, or at best small groups of friends going in together.
If I take the 30 annuity payments, after taxes the first payout would be $13,381,647, and the last would be $54,965,238: Idaho Mega Millions Jackpot Annuity Payout Schedule | USA Mega
You can look up what the payout would be in your state here: Mega Millions Jackpot Analysis | USA Mega
Also note that if the jackpot makes a lottery ticket +EV, you should use the Kelly criterion to determine what your bet size should be to maximize the chance that you don’t run out of money due to bad luck. The people who have run the numbers on this generally say you have to be a millionaire to want to play more than the amount of the required bet, since the odds are so long. See Do Not Play the Lottery Unless You Are a Millionaire although I admit the lottery size on that page is rather low. I believe if you extrapolate the numbers, you’d still have to be pretty rich to want to plop down any amount of money on a +EV bet with such a small chance of success.
Maybe it would destroy your life, but it sure wouldn’t destroy mine.
Thank you for pointing out that significant flaw in my plan. Further research indicates it’s actually both.
You may also owe state taxes, depending on where you live and where you purchased the ticket.
Fortunately Texas is only 10 minutes away so that’s easily remedied.
There will be a significant gratuity coming you way when I win.
You just need to learn to say NO and mean it. It is just numbers in the bank and you don’t have to do much more with it than you want to. Charities? Not interested and not my problem. Friends and relatives, be cold and make it clear that you will not even buy a plot of land to dig a hole and bury them. Especially relatives. Wife doesn’t like it? Get a new wife. Kids want a peice of it, get new kids (see new wife about that).
No means NO! You will need to meet with lawyers, bankers, accountants, but you can still keep that on your own terms. Anyone who says that you must do this or that, fire them.
Warren Buffett has somewhere around $177 billion net worth and still lives in his old house in Omaha. Because that is what he wants.
Remember, at that point everyone works for you and you don’t have to do shit. Relish your new role as a cold hearted bastard and you will be just fine.
Nah, that ain’t how it would be at all, sorry.
Just for starters, I do know how to say no and mean i and make the recipient know it. Just ask my partner or anyone else who knows me. Now let’s say I am the one, the unlikely, the winner of a billion or a zillion dollars. You’re right that I don’t have to do anything but what I want with it, and that’s a good thing.
Well, yea nay and eh? to that. You see, I might choose to donate some, or a lot of money to charities–a lot of which you probably would disapprove of, but, like the ones I didnt give any money to, that’s truly not my problem. Nor would it be any business of yours one way or another, so spare us all the attempted guilt trip. I’ve got maybe one and a half close relatives left and we haven’t much to do with each other, so the rest of the soap opera in your first paragraph is hilariously irrelevant.
What actually happens is more like: I take myself, my partner, and a few select companions on a world tour of all the nice place with hot weather, delicious food, interesting animals, and spectacular sights. I find a nice home someplace warm, with very lenient laws concerning exotic pet ownership, consensual sexual activity between grownups, and drugs. Move in and set up a meangerie, a restayrant-grade kitchen, a hot tub and sauna, a killer sound system. Hire some staff, treat them well, and invite my friends to the party, then live happily ever after with my lover and my pets and my other chosen companions in a world of sybaritic sensuality, hedonic experiment, and lived libertinage.
The lawyers and accountants might be somewhat inevitable but yeah, you’d have to keep an eye on them and yeah, if anyone says I must do thus-and-so, I either get aroundf it or don’t. I already know I’m not obliged to anyone.
And why the Hell did you bring up Warren Buffet and where he lives and what he does? He is just a name to me, a guy I’ve heard of who’s richer than God Almighty to be sure, butr not anyone who’s germane to my life or what I do even if I did get extremely filthy rich.
Only the people who actually worked for me and who I paid, would work for me. And me not having to do jackshit that I don’t want to is a feature, not a bug. Getting to that point would be the point.
Cold hearted bastard? Hell, I’ve already been called that and worse, by people whose opinions actually mattered to me.
In conclusion, it’s like I said in my post you’re replying to: it might ruin your life, a sudden zillion-dollar windfall, but it sure wouldn’t ruin mine. I’ll be having the time of my life for the rest of my life with that money.