If your retirement strategy is to play the lottery, you just saw your “management fee” double. A Powerball ticket, the slip for America’s flagship lottery, will double in price from $1 to $2 per play starting on Sunday, January 15.
You’ll have to pay more or play less. Or maybe you can play the same amount and just pray to the gambling gods twice as hard.
The price bump follows the lead of many state-run lottery scratch-offs. Those come in larger denominations, but the $1 Powerball had been untouched until now.
According to the AP, players get better odds of winning in exchange for the costlier point of entry. The theory is a higher cost and fewer tickets, therefore better chance of a single player coming up in the draw.
Right… keep telling yourself that.
Officials expect the higher price to pump up jackpots, which will likely entice new customers and offset those scared off by the chance of throwing away $2 on a long shot instead of throwing away just a single buck. Though it’s pretty tough to imagine the price increase to drive off the longshot treasure hunters out there in any big way.
The price hike is likely to go into effect without a lot of fireworks. But whether or not the poor and desperate should be burning their cash at all on lotto tickets, however expensive, is a different story.
Read more about Powerball tickets doubling in price on MSNBC, via the Associated Press.
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