With tonight's Mega Millions jackpot being $1.6 billion, you might have thought: "If I bought every single possible ticket combination to guarantee myself a win, would I turn a profit?"
The answer is yes, technically... But there are some BIG caveats:
First, you'd need to buy 302,575,350 tickets to get every combo. That would cost you just over $605 million.
You'd also need nearly 700,000 people filling out tickets for 10 straight hours today to have time to buy all the possible ticket combinations. Quick Picks won't work.
Then the lump sum payout is an estimated $904 million... plus you'd win a lot of secondary jackpots, like for matching five numbers but not the final ball, which would net you roughly $75 million more. That would give you a total of $979 million in winnings, or $374 million in profit.
But here's the BIG ONE: that's before taxes, which knocks off roughly 40%. That takes your winnings down to $587.4 million... or a LOSS of around $18 million.
Plus, if someone else hit the jackpot, you'd have to split it, so there's that too.
Good luck tonight everyone!