Lottery officials estimate that 1.2 million Mega Millions tickets were being sold every hour just in New York. All those dollars and dreams keep pushing the jackpot up. Late Friday morning it was announced that the jackpot up to $640 million.
Most people let the computer pick their numbers but some dedicated players took the time to fill out the card with specific numbers to play. One man said he had researched the numbers that had the strongest history of coming up on a Yahoo search engine before he came in.
At Chase's Cigar store in Syracuse's Eastwood neighborhood, Bradley Baker was sure he had a plan to win it all.
"You have 15 grandkids, you take all their birthdays and just match them up with the numbers - and that's how I'll win this evening," said Baker.
The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 176 million. Even if there are multiple winners, financial planner Ted Sarenski from Blue Ocean Strategic Capital says they will need to have some professional advice on how to handle the windfall.
"If this was just invested in municipal bonds, you could probably make about a million dollars a month. So think of it that way, I've got all this money but let me spend it as if I had a million a month not four hundred million. Because you can run out - believe it or not," said Sarenski.
Mega Millions tickets can be sold until 9pm on Friday night. Many stores have extra staff on hand to help sell tickets in the final hours.
