The lottery jackpot is the amount of money you can win if you buy a ticket. It can be a small sum, but if you are lucky enough to win it could mean becoming rich. People dream of what they would do with a jackpot, such as buying a luxury home or traveling the world. They may also close all of their debts. However, a big jackpot can quickly become a huge financial burden if you don’t have the right plan in place.

Lottery organizers have long used super-sized jackpots to drive ticket sales and draw attention on news sites and television shows. But if you know a little bit about the math, it’s easy to see why those jackpots don’t produce winners more often:

The odds of winning a lottery prize depend on how many tickets you buy and what numbers you choose. But even if you buy a million tickets, the chances of winning are very low. The number is so small that mathematicians have an obscure name for it, epsilon. You’re more than 300 times more likely to get hit by lightning in your lifetime than win a Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot.

As a result, lottery prizes tend to grow faster than ticket sales, because each new drawing increases the odds of winning by a factor of about 10 to 1. The jackpots of popular games like Powerball and Mega Millions have also grown as interest rates rise, because higher interest rates increase the value of the payout from an annuity payment plan over 30 years, which is how many lotteries offer their winners, according to MUSL. Lottery agencies are required to withhold 24% of all winnings over $5,000 for taxes, but that won’t always cover the total tax you’ll owe, depending on your other income.