No winners Saturday, Powerball jackpot surges to $1.4 billion

Saturday night marked the 19th straight drawing with no victor, vaulting the jackpot to more than a billion for the first time ever.

“Compared to the previous few months where sales were between $950,000 and $3.5 million each week, that’s about 7 to 20 times more”, she said. Your chance of winning the jackpot 1 in 292,201,338, and that stays the same no matter what the jackpot total is.

The jackpot has ballooned since its November 4 starting point of $40 million and spurred huge ticket sales. Their tickets matched four of the white ball numbers plus the Powerball.

The odds of matching all six numbers to win the jackpot are one in 292.2 million.

Sure, the allure of winning $1.4 billion this Wednesday is great, but most could probably retire from the lump sum taken from a $31 million jackpot. Many of those tickets are worth between $1 and $5, but some folks never realize that they have a life-changing prize in their pocket. It was already the largest in USA lottery history.

Of this tax rate, the USA government automatically withholds 25 per cent of such large prizes if the victor is a citizen or resident with a social security number.

Tune in again at 10:30 p.m. January 13 when I will be broadcasting live from the MLive office in Grand Rapids to discuss the jackpot, give you the latest results and reveal the winning numbers.

Don’t be down about losing Saturday’s record $949.8 millionPowerball drawing if you dropped two hopeful bucks on a ticket.

Powerball is played in 44 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

The victor can choose to be paid the full jackpot in annual installments over 29 years – or take a one-off cash payment of $930m – before taxes.