Three tickets were sold for the $640 million Mega Millions jackpot.
The lump sum payment is $462 million.
Split three ways that is $154 million each. Not a bad payday assuming each person only played a couple of bucks in tickets.
Overall, playing the lottery is a guaranteed way to lose money. Some estimates believed that over 1 billion tickets were sold to the last Mega Millions payout. That means 999,999,997 people didn’t win and 3 did.
Facing foreclosure from Bank of America?
BofA has realized they have a problem on their hands: you can foreclose on millions of delinquent homes all you want, but getting rid of them before they fall apart due to disrepair isn’t as easy.
If you’re sitting on thousands of properties it takes a lot of potential upkeep to keep damage through nature, vandalism, or just general maintenance from ruining the home. It takes time, money, and effort to air the home out, keep mold from growing, and to keep the yard trimmed.
To combat this problem, Bank of America is running a pilot program in Arizona that will let homeowners facing inevitable foreclosure to hand over their properties to the bank. In return they are forgiven the mortgage debt and allowed to rent the property back from the bank for up to three years. The bank gets the bad mortgage taken care of, gets to keep the asset, and generates a little bit of return in the monthly rent back to the bank.
Will this solve the foreclosure problem for the big banks? Probably not, but it is a step in the right direction.
March Madness kicked off earlier this week and seemed rather mundane until Friday night.
Before this year’s tournament a #15 seed had beaten a #2 only four times in all of history. On Friday it happened twice: Missouri lost to Norfolk State and the team that always seems to be in the Final Four, Duke, lost to #15 Lehigh.
It’s not all bad news for brackets: the #1 seeds are all still in play thanks to some awful officiating in the Syracuse vs. UNC-Asheville game. And a majority of people have at least 3 #1 seeds in their Final Four.
That’s why they call it March Madness and once again the grand tournament is living up to its name. Now, if we could only do this in every sport and extend this to college football…
Apple announced the new, third generation of the iPad this week to much fanfare.
Oddly enough Apple isn’t calling it the iPad 3… just “the new iPad”.
It’s just iPad?
That goes against Apple’s naming convention. That plus the debut of a color splashed version of the Apple logo have some tech journalists wondering if Apple is going to change things up again on the logo side.
iPads are expensive devices. Well built and entertaining, but other than a sharper display is there that much difference between the original iPad, the iPad 2, and now the iPad 3?
Not significantly. Will you be buying one?
General Motors has temporarily suspended the production of the Chevy Volt for at least five weeks in order to sell off the current high level of inventories it has of the vehicle.
This could be a landmark turn for electric vehicle production in the United States, which hasn’t taken off like manufacturers have wanted.
Will the line come back to life in a few weeks as demand picks up or will it be shuttered long term?
Only time will tell.
It’s a day in celebration of Dad. Maybe he taught you how to build things with your own two hands. Maybe he taught you how to mow. Or maybe he taught you how to balance your checkbook. Whatever your Father’s specialty was, he likely imparted part of it on you as you were growing up.
We can all agree we wouldn’t be here without good ole Dad, so take time today to reach out and let him know how much your appreciate him.
The US Stock Market was shaken this week by seemingly bad job growth numbers. Only 54,000 jobs were added to payrolls. That sounds like a lot of people, but economists were expecting about 170,000 to be added. Over 230,000 jobs were added in April, and all the numbers this year aside from January were over 200,000. May’s number of 54,000 was much closer to January’s number. It’s a big step back according to economists, and with unemployment on the rise, fear affected the stock market. The S&P 500 dropped 1.93% for the week.
With the uncertainty in the market, Warren Buffet’s quote on fear came to mind: “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”
So, should you be greedy and jump into the market? Is it time to wait for the stock market to go down before hopping back in? Or does that qualify as timing the market?
Prince William and Kate got married over in the British Empire. They are now known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. It was rumored so many people might tune in and tweet about the wedding that major websites and services like Twitter might crash. Thankfully the wedding started at 3am Eastern time, well enough early not to disrupt much of anything on my end of the world.
You may have no interest in the Royals — neither do I — except this one curious fact: it is estimated that up to 80 million pounds (about $134 million) was spent on the wedding. Even if a hefty chunk of that is security, and if you’re off by a factor of 50%… that’s a ton of money. And they say there’s a global recession!Continue Reading
There was an interesting and kind of odd article up at CNN Money this week. Donald Trump either doesn’t know how much he is worth or doesn’t have a solid understanding of what net worth is. One author (that he sued!) claimed he was only worth $150-200 million, while trump says $3.7 billion is a conservative estimate. This may not seem like a big deal, but with Trump allegedly considering a Presidential campaign in 2012 I find it intriguing. Understanding what net worth means is kind of important especially if you claim to be a business mogul.
President’s Day is pretty nice in the Free From Broke household. Well, not the day actually, the whole week. Here in New York kids get off of school for President’s week as does the Mrs. It’s nice to get a week together with the family. Of course we’ll also be doing a lot of errands and such like our taxes this week as well. President’s week could not have come sooner!
Hope you have a great President’s Day (and week)!
