Expert says Powerball tickets may not make financial sense, but many are going on dreams
CHICAGO (CBS) -- You have at least one more chance to get lucky with the Powerball lottery.
No one got all the numbers Thursday night, so the jackpot on Saturday is an estimated $1.6 billion – the largest jackpot in Powerball history.
And Chicagoans are taking their chances. On Friday night, CBS 2's Marybel González visited a store in the Pilsen neighborhood where tickets sales have been nonstop.
At Yaya's Mini Mart, 1458 W. 18th St., the lotto machine has been printing tickets nonstop.
"It was busy," said store owner Omar Ali. "The people buying the Mega and the Power."
The hopes of winning that $1.6 billion jackpot are on everyone's mind – including Ali's.
"I hope somebody wins from the store," he said. "You know, I get the commission."
Others had hopes for what they could do with the money.
"To pay the university for my daughters," said Mari Leyva.
"That could be a life-changing amount of money," said Kevin Goss.
But the odds of hitting the Powerball jackpot are one in 292 million.
Despite this, people are still taking their chances. They are doing so even given the current state of the economy, explained economist Jacob Robbins.
"In a lot of previous times, when the economy is actually in recession, we see a spike in lottery sales," said Robbins, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "If things aren't going so well in your personal situation or in your job, inflation is cutting the value of your income, well, one way out of that is, again, go down and buy something which can potentially change that."
But does buying Powerball tickets make financial sense? Not really, said Robbins.
In fact, by his calculations, after you factor in the odds, taxes, and possibly splitting the jackpot if you did win, you're really only getting half the value of your ticket.
"What you're doing is you're taking $2, and you're essentially putting one of the dollars into the shredder," Robbins said. "From a purply logical sense, it's not a good financial decision. But humans are not logical. We don't think in terms of probabilities and returns. We think in terms of ideas, and dreams, and thoughts about what we would like to do with the money."
The people buying tickets Friday night seemed to agree.
"Everybody has a dream to win," said Ali.
If you do win, Robbins recommends you hire a tax advisor and a lawyer as soon as possible to help you figure out the next steps.
