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The Powerball jackpot has climbed to an estimated $1.4 billion, which marks the third-largest prize in Powerball's history, per USA Today. While that might seem like a tempting amount of
money to take a chance on winning, the odds of doing so aren't great. According to Nerdwallet, "the odds of picking all six numbers correctly are about 1 in 292 million." And if you did end
up winning, about 24% of your winnings would be withheld for taxes.
In short, even if buying a lottery ticket doesn't cost you a fortune, there are still much better ways to spend your money.
Given the unlikely odds of winning the lottery, it's a better bet to put that money toward paying down high-interest debt like credit card debt. As Kiplinger pointed out, "paying off a
balance with a 13% interest rate is like earning 13% on your investments — an incredibly valuable use of the money."
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Becca Stanek has worked as an editor and writer in the personal finance space since 2017. She previously served as a deputy editor and later a managing editor overseeing investing and
savings content at LendingTree and as an editor at the financial startup SmartAsset, where she focused on retirement- and financial-adviser-related content. Before that, Becca was a staff
writer at The Week, primarily contributing to Speed Reads.