The tickets to my future are tucked in my wallet next to my driver’s license and an overburdened credit card.

They are the 10 different lines of numbers to play for the Powerball lottery. They should have cost $20. They were only $16 because I won $4 in Wednesday’s drawing and rolled that prize over when no numbers hit and the jackpot increased.

The Saturday jackpot will hit $1.7 billion. It is the third-largest prize in U.S. history. The only two larger were also Powerball drawings — an October 2023 drawing hit $1.765 billion while a November 2022 prize topped $2 billion.

I am not a regular lottery player. While some play diligently, week in and week out, I play like a Christmas and Easter Catholic. I show up for the big events. I start to pay attention when the jackpot tops $500 million and start to buy tickets when it goes over $700 million.

But when I buy, I dream big. A little list on a notepad is like a fantasy football roster, doodling out the perfect house I just saw on Zillow and the car I would buy my mom. Whirlwind vacation for the whole family? You bet.

Those blue ribbon prizes, however, are something that I concede exist only in my most delusional state. What I, and I believe most Americans, want is simply relief from the crushing pressure of not being rich.

Various economic organizations put the number of people in the U.S. hanging on to solvency by their fingernails at between 45% and 70%. Bank of America says most of us are spending our whole paychecks on the bare minimums. The difference between housed and homeless is one financial crisis. That’s something like losing a single paycheck because of illness or having a catastrophic car repair.

The dream of being a billionaire for those people is not about owning an island or a private jet or a closet full of designer clothes. It’s enough security to breathe rather than exist in a perpetual state of financial fight or flight.

Right now that can be worse as many people are either already squeezed tighter by inflation or waiting to see how tariffs will cut deeper.

Ask some people about their plans for a lottery prize and you can get the seemingly boring answer of “I would pay off my debt.” While that might not be as grandiose as a yacht or a beach house, when people are checking their bank balance before they buy groceries, the impossible dream of having no credit card balance is like a super power.

Yes, the Powerball odds are just 1 in 292.2 million, which is more unlikely than being struck by lighting or killed by a cow. You thought I was going to say shark, didn’t you? Nope, a cow-related death is a 1 in 200 million occurrence; sharks are even less likely at 1 in 264 million. You are almost 10 times more likely to become president than to win the Powerball, and only 45 people have done that.

But no matter how unlikely that drawing is, the winning isn’t just the jackpot. It’s also the gift every player gets. It’s that Schrodinger’s cat moment after you buy the ticket and before the drawing when everyone gets to imagine that moment of financial freedom when they can stop checking the balance and just buy the bread.

And my ticket is already in my wallet.

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)