Some people might buy a $2 lottery ticket as a form of entertainment and find satisfaction in “the excitement of thinking you might win,” Diaz says.

IS BUYING A LOTTERY TICKET A GOOD INVESTMENT?īecause winning is so rare, experts maintain that lottery tickets are horrible investments - but note that every person’s reason for playing the lottery is different. Winning the lottery has become harder in recent years, causing jackpots to grow bigger and bigger - and that’s by design. For both games, the odds of winning any prize stand at about 1 in 24. Of course, both Mega Millions and Powerball offer a handful of tiers below the top jackpots - with the lowest prizes starting at $2 and $4, respectfully. Even if you bought a lottery ticket for every drawing over 80 years - two times a week for Mega Millions and three times a week for Powerball - you would still be far less likely to win than to be struck by lighting once in your lifetime, Syracuse University mathematics professor Steven Diaz added.

Still, that is over 1,600 times more likely than winning the Powerball lottery.”Īnother common comparison is getting struck by lighting. “The chance of correctly spelling ‘Powerball’ is about 1 out of 180,000, which is very unlikely. “Imagine you have scrabble tiles that spell out ‘Powerball.’ Mix them up and then select them in a random order,” Kovach explained.

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