I’ve already written a couple of articles in regard to lottery pools. Just as a recap, a lottery pool is when a group of friends or coworkers all each chip in a minimum amount of cash, and the cash all goes toward purchasing lottery tickets. If one of the pool’s lottery tickets happens to be a winner then everyone involved in the pool gets an equal share of the winnings.
Joining lottery pools has its advantages and disadvantages. One major advantage is that your odds improve in proportion to the number of people who enter the pool. In other words, you have a 1 and 300,000,000 chance of winning if you play the Mega Millions jackpot by yourself. If you join a lottery pool with 50 people, you then have a 50 in 300,000,000 chance of winning (yes, I know. Not great odds in the grand scheme of things). Disadvantages will be touched on later in the article.
However, there have been lottery pools that actually did end up hitting for a tidy sum of cash. In some cases the cash was substantial. In this article, I’m going to review a few well-known lottery pools that paid off for their members.
In 2012 coworkers working for a Pennsylvania transit agency decided to get together and play the PowerBall. 49 people decided to join the lottery pool. This pool produced the winning ticket and these people won themselves the opportunity to split the $172 million jackpot. although there were 49 people in the pool, each would receive about $3.5 million before taxes. I wonder how many of them kept their jobs.
We’ve all heard of Quaker Oats, right? Well, 20 employees working for this company decided to pool their money together to get PowerBall tickets. Their pool netted them a $241 million jackpot. That’s not the most amazing part of the story. Apparently, some or all of these people kept their jobs after winning. Turns out they pooled their money together a second time and the group won another $10,000.
Side Note: I wouldn’t have been part of that second pool. I would have been long gone with my share of the $241 million (about $12.5 million before taxes).
A little more recently in 2018, a group of 11 coworkers decided to put together a pool to enter the Mega Millions jackpot. The funny part about this story is that these 11 coworkers decided to do this at the last minute. Well, this last-minute decision turned out the be life-changing for all 11 of them. Their collaboration netted them a grand prize jackpot of $543 million. That’s nearly $50 million per person. Not a bad day’s work, huh?
Now before you run out and start gathering as many people as you can to form a lottery pool, I just need to do a little housekeeping.
Most large jackpot winners opt for the lump sum cash options. Lump sum payments are usually about half of what the advertised amount is. The sums of money that these groups won are likely based on whatever the advertised lottery amount was at the time.
For example, the $543 million was advertised, but the lump sum amount was surely significantly less. Also, these dollar amounts do not take into account taxes which would also significantly lower the actual amount. If the winners of the $543 million lived in a state that withholds federal and state taxes, then the actual lump sum amount was closer to $235 million.
And lastly, these reports do not include details of the pools as they relate to steps they took to protect themselves in the event that they actually won – thus, the disadvantages of pools that I mentioned earlier. I do not know how the members of these pools navigated collecting and distributing the money, nor if there were any individuals claiming to be part of the pools and sued for shares of the money.
I mention this because when most people decide to get into these pools, it isn’t so much about expecting to win. So, because the chances are still very low, these groups rarely really prepare in the event that they win. So if you plan to put together or join a lottery pool with your coworkers, treat it as if you will actually win and prepare yourself for the possibility properly.