If you won the powerball?

Question

how much do you get weekly or is it monthly as your payment I hear it's like 10,000 a week but i'd like to knew if thats true.

Answer 1

It's not something most people have to worry about, since the odds are over 150,000,000 to one against hitting it.

But if you win, it depends on what the jackpot is that week.

It starts at $15m and keeps going up as high as $200m or so.

However, in America the government is going to take at least 35% of your money in tax.  And the prize advertised is a con anyway.

The reality is that you have two choices.  Once is to take the cash.  You will have to pay the tax and a 'penalty' for wanting your winnings.  So you can expect to lose 40-60% of the advertised prize.

Alternatively, you can elect to take your money over 20-30 years, depending on the state.  In that case you will lose your tax each year, but you will receive your money.

So if you elect to get paid yearly for twenty years or so, the amount you get will be in proportion to what you won, and that can vary tremendously.

But to give you an idea of how unlikely winning is.  Imagine I had a phone book, that listed every American over 18.  Imagine I flicked though the pages of this large phone book and picked two Americans at random.  Now imagine how unlikely it is that I would randomly pick your name out of the 300,000,000+ Americans that live here.  Pretty unlikely eh?