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Comment by plg | Hacker News Reader

In what universe is having a $400,000 bank account not winning the lottery? Holy hell, dude.

Well, considering the minimum jackpot for Powerball is $20 million and the average jackpot is $141 million, the answer is this universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerball#2009_changes_include_...

Is Powerball the only game that qualifies as winning the Lottery?

I think Powerball and MegaMillions are the two people usually think of when they think "the lottery", at least in the states that I've lived in.

Word. I was looking at the numbers for MegaMillions - seems like one of the payouts is 1 million dollars - which I think can easily turn into 400k if you took a lump sum. There are also a few payouts that are smaller sums.

This is a sort of silly question, but does one only 'win' the lottery if they get the jackpot?

You can usually win something by matching a subset of the numbers. Matching all 7, for example, is the 'jackpot', but matching, say, 5, might net you $10k. Matching 4 might net $100. Usually matching < half the numbers in a lottery drawing gets you nothing, from what I recall.

We've got a bunch in North Carolina - the 'cash5' game has you pick 5 numbers. If you match any 2, you get $1 - I think that's the ticket price. The winnings for matching 3, 4 or 5 are dependent on how many tickets are sold and how many other matches there are. http://www.nc-educationlottery.org/faq_cash5.aspx That approach may be more common for lotteries - I'm no expert :)

We should just be happy HN has moved beyond Flappy Bird. Now we're back to watching The Social Network movie again, and talking about how pathetic $400K is over $18 lattes.

$400k would let me quit my job and run a startup. So... yeah, that would be pretty life-changing.

In what universe is having a $400,000 bank account not winning the lottery?

Silicon Valley. Remember the guy talked about at the beginning of "The Social Network" who commits suicide because he exited with "only" 3 million?

I see at least two universes:

1. The sort of universe where winning the lottery actually means winning multiple millions of dollars.

2. The sort of universe where having $400,000 is something to be proud of having earned.

I imagine the average lottery winning is far less than $400,000.

Dunno about average, but certainly the median.

According to my fast and very plausibly flawed analysis of Powerball odds, I think the average winning should be about $300, using the gracious assumption that all Powerball jackpots are $600,000,000 (the largest Powerball jackpot ever was $590,000,000).

http://www.powerball.com/powerball/pb_prizes.asp

San Francisco

We are so insulated from our community.

I guarantee you that for the vast, vast majority of San Franciscans, suddenly having $400,000 would be a truly life-changing event.

In the sense that they would have the down payment on a condo in the Mission, yes. But that's not what "winning the lottery" implies.

Put another way, $400,000 - over 100x the per capita GDP of Ukraine - is a pretty massive windfall for a guy who grew up in a village outside Kiev. Sure, he chose to stay in the Bay Area and double down on his earnings, but it's not like he didn't have other realistic options that involved never working another day in his life.

You're suggesting he should have taken his $400,000 and gone back to living in a village in Ukraine?

I'm observing that he could, and been accepted as successful for doing so, if he'd wanted to.

The key word in your comment is 'suddenly'. I'm sure it was nothing like waking up one morning and finding $400000 in a bag outside his front door.

It's not an exceptional level of wealth for this region. Not even top 10%.

Except the subject wasn't "the wealth of this region" but a poor immigrant living on food stamps.

The subject I'm responding to is "winning the lotto." That's why it's a poor comparison.

$400k is performing well at a BigCo for about a decade. I banked $100k in 4 years at MSFT, and I was not frugal. Surviving, let alone excelling in a large software company for 10 years is a demanding, sustained effort. In what way is it like the lottery?

I saved $40k my first year out of college making quite a bit less than fresh grads get at big companies. I was sort of frugal--I ate out a lot and lived in a really nice apartment, but I did share it with a roommate, I didn't have any expensive hobbies besides the occasional video game, and I did own a paid off car and had no other debts of any kind. Anyway, with no income increases and no investment appreciation of any kind (i.e., just putting 100% of the money under your bed, or in a checking account), that would be $400k in 10 years.

Super-importantly, incentive pay increases extra-linearly, at least in the MSFT reward game. So, e.g. in your 7th year you might be getting drastically more in bonus pay than in your 2nd year. Much more than you might expect just from raises. I assume that other large companies have somewhat comparable games, but I don't know first hand.

really? I'm obviously at the wrong BigCo

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