I don’t go to casinos, I don’t buy scratch offs, and I don’t play the powerball no matter how high the jackpot. That is until tonight, I was just informed that my wife threw in $10 with her family to buy lottery tickets. Now before I go off portraying my wife as a know nothing moron who plays the lottery I can see the occasional “fun” money being spent on what-if scenarios and by all other accounts I don’t think there are two many women in this world that can handle expenses as well as my wife. Me however I feel almost sick that some of our hard-earned money was voluntarily paid into the stupidity tax. I would rather have heard her say that she had just lit a $10 bill on fire to see what would happen.

Well anyway I guess in some way I am playing the lottery today, let’s see what my odds of winning are. According to the Powerball lottery the odds of winning the powerball jackpot are 1 in 146,107,962. Now let’s put that into perspective. You would be more likely to flip a penny in the air and have it land tails 27 times in a row than win the lottery. This is probably the least gruesome and maybe most fun example of how hard it is to beat the odds. Here are some more examples.

  • I am 5,000 times more likely to be struck by lightening in my life time (Source: National Weather Service )

  • I am 208 times more likely to be struck by lightening this year than win the powerball (Source: National Weather Service)

  • You are 16 times more likely to get killed driving 10 miles to claim your Powerball ticket than actually winning it in the first place (Source: CNN)

  • Note: buying more lottery tickets does not increase your chances to win at all - its negligible unless you buying thousands and even then see your odds below

  • If you spent $10,000 a week on lottery tickets it would take you 2,809 years to win (Source: My Financial Journey)

  • If you spent $1 million dollars per year on lottery tickets it would take you over 146 years to win (Source: My Financial Journey)

  • If every single person alive on the planet (6.5 Billion) bought a powerball ticket - only 44 people would win (Source: Google Search )

  • My wife and I are expecting - we are 4,565,874 more times likely to have twins than win the power ball (Source: BabyCenter and Storknet)

  • We are 584,432 times more likely to have identical twins

  • 18,038 more likely to have triplets

  • 200 times more likely to have quadruplets

  • over 30 times more likely to have quintuplets

  • You are 8,117 times more likely to be murdered than win the lottery (Source: Funny2.com)

  • You are 213 times more likely to die in your bathtub (Source: Funny2.com)

  • You are 146 times more likely to die from a fireworks accident in your lifetime (Source: Funny2.com)

  • You are 208 times more likely to die from a dog bite (Source: Funny2.com)

So I guess my challange to my readers is to flip a penny and let me know how many of one side you get in a row. Don’t cheat eaither ;-)

Also if you got any other favorite odds comparisons let me know.