Record High Powerball Winning Tips + Advice If You Do Win

The Powerball jackpot is expected to be more than $700 Million for this weekends drawing, setting a new jackpot record.

Unfortunately the odds of winning are not in your favor, but here are a few tips that might help you win along with some "must know" advice if you do win.

Ticket holders have a 1 in 292.2 million chance of winning. To put that in perspective, the odds of hitting the jackpot are about the same as your odds of flipping a quarter and getting heads 28 times in a row.

• The only way to increase your chance of winning? You gotta buy more tickets.  The catch? The more tickets you buy, the worse your chances get.
• Forget lucky numbers. 3, 7, 11 and numbers under 31 are popular choices because they coincide with dates like birthdays and anniversaries.
• Sometimes bigger jackpots aren't better - look for smaller ones that cause less of a frenzy.
• Quick picks and personal numbers have the same chances of winning - one in 175 million.

If you do happen to win the grand prize, there is one piece of advice that you MUST consider when thinking about how to claim your prize.  MarketWatch offers this advice:

Take the lump sum, which currently would be about $430 million.  That's not typically the suggested path, but the threat of the fiscal cliff—and expiring tax breaks—makes things different this year.  In the long run, the lump sum "could save you millions in taxes."

 

The main thing to remember if you do win is that we have always been friends, and I probably would have split my winnings with you if I had won.