The Powerball and Mega Millions are the two largest nationwide lottery games in America selling around a billion tickets a year. Despite millions of Americans playing, most don’t know how to properly play the game causing them to lose. Those who do win disproportionately end up bankrupt despite winning millions of dollars. This is your guide to properly win the lottery and not end up bankrupt afterwards!
Which Game?
The first thing is to figure out which game to choose by focusing on location, prize money, and documentation. Location is going to affect your odds of winning and your tax rates making it essential to our strategizing. Taxation on lottery winnings can range from no taxes to over 10%. The best states to win the lottery in are California, Florida, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming all of which charge no taxes. The worst states are New York (10.9%), Maryland (8.75%), and Washington DC (8.5%). The most common state winner of Mega Millions is New York (which has the highest taxation rate in the country), and the Powerball is mostly won in Indiana, a state with a taxation rate of 3.23%. The Powerball has a far better top state winner, but when looking at the top ten state winners between the two it greatly averages out. This means that choosing a game based on the best top winning state tax rate alone is useless. Mega Millions has the pro of a bigger jackpot of around $200 million, but that will attract a far larger number of players. The Powerball has a current jackpot of $20 million increasing our odds due to the lower number of players. This gives a point to Powerball. The other major deciding factor is our ability to look back on previous winners to make the best calculations of our odds. The Powerball has an easier website to navigate and a more extensive recording of previous winners. The better top state, less competition , and more through documentation means we’re going to focus in on the Powerball.
What State?
Knowing which game we are playing allows us to determine where to buy our ticket from. Indiana is the most common winning state for the Powerball with 9.4% of all winners and has a tax rate on lottery winnings of 3.23%, an overall reasonable rate. However, we can look at the full list of winners organized by state alongside state tax rates to maximize our odds and minimize our tax rates. The second and third most common state winners, Missouri and Minnesota, have higher tax rates then Indiana, but our fourth state with almost 5% of all winners and a tax rate of 3.07% is Pennsylvania. Of the top five winning states, Pennsylvania has the lowest tax rate making it our most ideal top state to win in when considering taxes. While I don’t personally think sacrificing a better chance at winning is worth the 0.16% better tax rate, it is a choice you can make.
How many tickets?
Now we know which game we’re playing, the Powerball, and what state to play in, either Pennsylvania or Indiana. The next question is how many tickets to buy, and I have to admit this is where things get a bit more luck based no matter our strategy. The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot is 0.0000000034%, in other words zero. The best way to overcome these odds is to buy as many tickets as possible, but that means we need an astronomical amount of money. The solution to this issue is to spend all the money we already have, any money we can get from loans, and/or any money we can get from selling our house/car/etc. on lottery tickets. Once we win the lottery we’ll make all our money back and can rebuy all our stuff back. Our goal should be to get around $1 million allowing us to buy 500,000 tickets. This increases our odds from 0.0000000034% to 0.0017% getting us much closer to a 1% chance of victory. With the advantage of our 500,000 tickets along with our previous knowledge of the most common winning states we are sure to win.
what to do after you win?
Once we win the $20 million jackpot from the Powerball the game isn’t over yet. Do not, for any reason, accept the Powerball publicly. If people you know figure out you just won millions of dollars, everyone will rush to you asking for help and money. If people you don’t know figure it out, scammers and con artists will sprout up around you. The best choice is to accept the money anonymously so that you can decide who gets to know about your money. The next post victory issue is taxation. Federal taxes will immediately chop our money down to a measly 15.2 million, and anything you do with that money will most likely be taxed later on. So what can we do? The first thing is to send our money over to a Swiss bank account. Transferring all our money will cost a flat rate of $7.90 plus 0.28% of our money. This brings us down to around $15.16 million, but ensures a lower yearly tax rate, anonymity, and the ability to convert our money easily to other currencies for investment. Next, we need to find ways to continue making money with the money we now have. We need to make sure our Swiss bank account is able to earn the most interest it can. Then we should invest our money in stalks, but not all of it. We need to diversify what we do with our money to ensure that if one endeavor fails we don’t screw ourselves over. Another great way to continue making money is by buying land or property. This gives you the ability to resell the land at a higher rate or rent the land to people who need homes. To further avoid taxes we can donate some of our money to charity making it a deductible on our tax returns. One of the most important things we need to do is not outlive our yearly income. Most winners go bankrupt because they quit their jobs and live lavishly. We need to keep our job, and continue to live to live within our means. We can now buy a house, but don’t buy a mansion. We can get a nicer car, but don’t get a crazy expensive one. The first priority is to help our money to continue growing before we start spending lavishly.
I hope you can manage to implement this one hundred percent full proof plan to win the lottery. Good Luck!