Here's How Much You'd Have to Spend to Guarantee a Powerball Win

When it comes to playing the lottery, people can be pretty superstitious. Some only play their favorite numbers, while others will only buy tickets from a particular place. But ultimately, there's only one thing that's proven to increase your odds of taking home that sweet, sweet jackpot: Buying more tickets.

With enough time and money, it's technically possible to guarantee yourself a win. But it might come at a higher cost than you were expecting. Let's take a closer look at the math.

Here's how much you'd have to spend to win the Powerball jackpot

The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot -- currently estimated at $1.4 billion for Saturday's drawing -- are 1 in 292,201,338. Since a Powerball ticket costs $2, that means you'd have to spend $584,402,676 to purchase every possible number combination and guarantee yourself the victory. So basically, you'd have to have already won the lottery before to make this strategy remotely feasible.

And even if you had the cash to pull this off, you couldn't do it alone. You'd need close to 3 million tickets. With only two to three days between drawings, you'd need to find a way to obtain 1,127 to 1,691 tickets per second to have them all in time for the next drawing. So unless you've got an army of helpers to go along with your hundreds of millions of dollars in your bank account, it's not happening. Sorry to disappoint you.

Here's how much you'd have to spend to claim smaller Powerball prizes

The following table gives the odds of winning each of Powerball's smaller prizes. The winning amounts assume you opt for a standard $2 ticket instead of paying extra for the Power Play. As you can see, it's not promising.

At a minimum, if you wanted to ensure some kind of Powerball win, you'd have to spend $52. That's enough to get you a ticket with each of the Powerball numbers -- 1 to 26. If you did that, you'd guarantee yourself a $4 win. And I don't know about you, but that seems like an awful lot of work for what would likely turn out to be a $48 loss after factoring in the amount spent on tickets.

I don't say any of this to discourage you from playing the lottery if you're comfortable with the risks and can afford to lose the cash. I've even been known to throw a couple of dollars in the ring for my chance at the big money when the jackpot is high. But a Powerball win definitely shouldn't be part of your long-term plans for your future.

How to increase your odds of growing your wealth over time

If you want to grow your wealth over the long term, investing is a smart way to do it. There's still an element of risk involved, but you're a lot more likely to wind up with a profit over the long term. Of course, that depends on how you're investing too.

If you take all the extra cash you have and throw it on a single penny stock, you're basically still gambling. To give yourself the best odds of success, you need to spread your money around between at least 25 stocks (or an index fund). And ideally, you want these to be from proven, strong companies you expect will continue to grow and improve their business far into the future.

Investing isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. If you're looking for one of those, you may as well keep playing the Powerball and hoping for the best. It obviously works out for some people. But for the majority of us, we have to take things a little slower and focus on building our wealth up a little at a time. Nothing will ever match the thrill of holding a winning lottery ticket. But watching your investment portfolio make slow and steady progress comes with its own kind of reward.

If you're willing to give it a try, you first need to open a retirement account or a brokerage account where you can invest your funds. Start small if you have to. Consider saving those few dollars you planned to spend on lottery tickets at first. Then, add more cash as it becomes available to you. As you watch your portfolio grow over time, you might even decide it's more worthwhile than risking your hard-earned cash on Powerball.