Best way to avoid sharing a lottery jackpot
There are three people in the USA who are set to have a very good Friday!
The winning tickets of the unprecedented record-breaking US Powerball jackpot have been announced, with three US citizens overcoming odds of roughly 1 in 292.2 million to land on the winning number (4-8-19-27-34). They will now split the world-record jackpot.
The winners will take away around $187.2 million each (after the 39.6 per cent federal income tax deduction and the winnings are split three ways) and they can elect to receive their prize as a lump sum or as annual payments that could be spread over decades.
Their identities are currently unknown, but they reside in California, Florida and Tennessee. These states that don’t tax lottery earnings, so they’ll be $28 million better off than if they lived elsewhere.
Sharing lottery jackpots isn’t uncommon, and there’s a reason for this.
Studies have found that when asked to pick random numbers humans tend to go for odd, prime and sequential numbers in an attempt to populate their ticket with “winning” numbers.
But people forget that the numbers drawn in a lottery system are completely random.
A 1998 paper in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainly found the most frequently played numbers in Britain were 7, 14, 21, 28, 35 and 42.
That being said, avoiding common numbers will only decrease the likelihood of sharing your prize. The likelihood of taking it outright is still next to zero!
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