INDIANA, USA — One Hoosier just walked away with a $1 million lottery ticket, as Monday's grand prize clocked in as the third-largest prize in Powerball's history and the fourth-largest jackpot in any U.S. lottery game.
Along with the Hoosier winner, lottery players in California, Oregon and Virginia matched the five white balls but not the Powerball to win $1 million. One player in Florida even matched five numbers and the Power Play to take home $2 million.
Overall, it's been a big year for Powerball players in Indiana. In early October, a $2 million ticket was sold at the Michigan Road Food Mart at 5106 N. Michigan Road in Indianapolis, while a $50,000-winning ticket was sold at a Luke Gas Station at 7277 Taft St. in Merrillville.
These winnings come as new data suggests Hoosiers may be a smidge luckier than the rest of the country when it comes to snagging those elusive Powerball winnings.
Indiana currently ranks as the state with the seventh most jackpot winners per million people over the past 20 years, according to a new analysis from Online Betting Community, which analyzed Powerball data to track overall winnings across the country.
Powerball tickets first went on sale for the first time on April 19, 1992, following the decision to rebrand the original Lotto America. The game was initially only played in Delaware, Iowa, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Washington, D.C., Wisconsin and West Virginia.
In 1992, Indiana boasted the very first Powerball winner. Since then, 39 Powerball jackpot tickets have been sold in Indiana since 1992, which is more than any other state, according to Powerball.
Fourteen of those Indiana winners took home jackpot earnings of $300 million or more.
"Aside from jackpot winners, we also see many $50,000, $100,000, and million dollar tickets sold right here in Indiana," said Jared Bond, director of external affairs for the Hoosier Lottery.
Indiana does not rank among the states with the highest average jackpot win per person, but it does rank in the number of states with the highest number of jackpot winners.
With our seemingly slightly better odds of winning, how should potential lottery winners handle their money if they happen to win?
Making the best of lottery winnings
Powerball winners face a unique journey following a potential win.
Robert Pagliarini is the president of Pacifica Wealth Advisors in California and the author of the "The Sudden Wealth Solution: 12 Principles to Transform Sudden Wealth into Lasting Wealth." He has helped hundreds of people across the country navigate the challenges a sudden influx of money can bring — a group of clientele that has included several lottery winners.
"It’s not always sunshine and rainbows and what not. There are some negatives that also come with such a big win," Pagliarini said.
In his work with lottery winners specifically, Pagliarini said it is common for people to experience a rush of excitement and happiness following their wins. There's a newfound sense of optimism, but it can be followed by feelings of existential dread, anxiety and uncertainty.
Whether through pure elation or despair though, Pagliarini cautions winners to not make any decisions from any type of highly charged emotional state.
"I would suggest if someone wins that they take a very long, deep breath and not let their emotions take over," Pagliarini said. "When we make decisions based on emotions, they’re usually not great outcomes."
Pagliarini said it's most common for lottery winners to accumulate personal material goods in the weeks or months after their win. Houses or cars are the most common first-time purchases but those, Pagliarini cautioned, can only go so far.
With some Powerball wins granting people many billions of dollars, winners can fast turn to poor investments or other risky financial decisions with that excess of cash if they don't know what they're doing.
"Take it slow. Find and put together a team of people who can guide you. Chances are this is your very first lottery win, so you want to get counsel from people to see what works and doesn’t work," Pagliarini said.
Instead of spending immediately, winners should instead gather a team of advisors, something Pagliarini calls a wealth triad: a tax person or CPA, an attorney and a financial advisor, to help them navigate their new life.
Pagliarini said his office is most often contacted a year or two after people first hit the lottery, potentially after making some financial decisions they're unhappy with. By that point, his clients have enough real world experience with the money to realize they're making decisions that are not making them happy.
"[Winners] just assume they want the money. The advantages with that is they get all the money and they can do anything they want with it. The disadvantage is they can do anything they want with it," Pagliarini said.
Ultimately, Pagliarini's advisors help people work through what type of life they want to achieve with the money, not just the stuff they want to accumulate.
"If I asked you what I would want if I won the lottery, it’s gonna be very similar: 'I wanna buy a new house, or maybe new houses depending on how the jackpot is. Cars, travel,'" Pagliarini said. "That’s the base of the pyramid, and then once you start to do those things, then you can get into the self-actualization things - maybe I want to start a nonprofit or donate or help people."
Leveraging lottery winnings in ways that are more aligned with who winners want to be, not just what they have, can do a lot to help winners feel a sense of steadiness in their new life.
"When you can wake up every day, and do anything you want and spend anything you want, a lot of stuff doesn't help," he said.
His biggest piece of advice? Don't take your Powerball winnings in one lump sum.
Pagliarini is a huge advocate for annuity payments, which allows lottery winners to get access parts of their winnings over the course of 30 or so years.
Annuity payments are also 5% bigger than the previous payments, to protect the winner's lifestyle and purchasing power from inflation.
"With the annuity, those payments are spread out over time . And listen, if you kind of screw the big lump sum up, if you spend that money down, that’s it. There’s no do-over. You spend it down, you’re done. But with the annuity, you get many opportunities to make very bad decisions. For every year, you get to start over," Pagliarini said.
Past clients who have taken annuity payments have taken anywhere between five and eight years to get used to their earnings and make better financial decisions with them.
Ultimately, the advice Pagliarini said he would give to lottery winners is the same as any person who experiences a sudden influx of cash.
While the lottery is the most-talked about form of sudden wealth inheritance, two others are much more likely for the everyday person. And, he said, the same rules apply.
"The much more common form of sudden wealth are an inheritance, all of a sudden you get this large inheritance, or a lawsuit settlement. That’s probably more common than the inheritance. People go from nothing to getting this windfall, and it shakes their world up," Pagliarini said.
Powerball's jackpot grows ever larger after nobody took home Monday's $1.55 billion jackpot.
Monday's grand prize clocked in as the third-largest prize in Powerball's history and the fourth-largest jackpot in any U.S. lottery game after rolling over for 34 consecutive drawings. The last time someone won the top prize was on July 19. That streak trails the record of 41 draws set in 2021 and 2022.