I bought one too. If I win I will setup a 3-year training program at some exotic place to train people become professional iPhone photographers (aka iphoneographers).

I've got five tickets.  There's ten bucks gone.

My manager at my day job gave me $20 to get tickets for the two of us.  Gotta love a boss like that!
And I see it's after 11:00 so I'd better go check those winning numbers!

Not to rain on everyone's parade, but...

You're several thousand times more likely to snuff it in a car accident on the way home from buying your lottery ticket than you are likely to win the lottery.  If you believe a long-shot is possible, then you have to believe you will almost certainly die on your car trip.  Better off just staying home.  Or changing your view of what is or isn't going to happen.

If someone asks me to pool money with them I say I'll do it, only if they choose my numbers... 1,2,3,4,5,6... they will object, "Those numbers would NEVER come up!  It's impossible!"  Then I point out that those numbers are just as likely (impossible) to come up as the six numbers they are planning to choose, or the ones they get on an easy pick.  Or I'll say, "Only if you play the six numbers that won last week."  Then I'm told "There's NO WAY the same numbers will come up again."  Again, the odds are just as good that those six numbers will come up again as the six numbers you're going to pick.  Mind-bogglingly unlikely?  Yes.  It's statistically impossible that 123456 will come up, or that last week's winning numbers will be picked again, or that you will win with any combination of numbers you choose.

More simply put... lotteries are taxes on people who don't understand math.

If you don't purchase a ticket you will not win (100%) for sure but someone is going to win just not me 

I'm going to sign a presidential decree taking your lottery winnings away.

See, my odds at becoming US President are 1 in 10 million... your odds at winning the Powerball are about 1 in 175 million.  So if you win the lottery, I'll almost certainly be president... so watch out!!!

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/30/15-things-more-likely-to-happen-than-winning-mega-millions.html

Unless you live in Minnesota (1) or New Jersey (2)...you're out of luck coz that's where the winners are from.

Blanket statement. Stereotyping. Not every poor person gambles although the statistics prove that many poor and uneducated do. However, even someone making minimum wage has the right to have fun if that is their definition of fun. Social engineering is not the answer, there is no utopia (I'm from the 70's when it was tried and abandoned). My state issues a lottery credit on our state taxes each year even if you don't participate so I make money even while losing it. If you want to debate the effects of legalized gambling that horse is out of the gate. Once it is legal there's no going back. Buying one ticket every so often so you can laugh about it at work when you lose has a social pay-off - smiles and feeling like one of the gang. Much better return than say buying a bottle of water when there is a drinking fountain just down the hall from your office. Much, much less frustrating than producing a stock image that never sells.

I bought a ticket for tonight's drawing.  If I win, I will start hiring models.

Look out Sean Locke.
 

Wow, you're going to hire Sean Locke as your model? I hear he is spensive!!:)

2 in Jersey and 1 in Minnesota.