Mega Millions Tickets Increasing in Price and Difficulty to Win

Here's good news and bad news. The good news? We're probably going to see more of those billion-dollar lottery jackpots soon. The bad news? If somehow you don't win, you're going to be out more money than before.

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Mega Millions just announced that they're going to be doubling the cost of their tickets from $1 to $2 as of Saturday. That will make for bigger jackpots, which is what they want, since big numbers drive people to buy tickets.

They have another strategy for making the payouts bigger, they're also going to make it tougher to win. The odds of winning will jump from one in 258.9 million to one in 302.6 million.

That gives it worse odds than the Powerball, which is Mega Millions' big competitor. Your odds of winning the Powerball are one in 292.2 million.

Powerball raised its ticket prices to $2 a few years back, since then they've usually had bigger jackpots than Mega Millions and sold way more tickets.