 you are more likely to get struck by lightning or get a hole in one than win the near one billion dollar mega ball jackpot but what if you do our next guest financial expert Melissa Armo reveals the one and only person just one that you should tell aside from me and sharing it I'm getting lucky the mega millions jackpot growing to a record 970 million dollars but your chances of winning not very high as you can imagine with only one in 302 million odds of you taking home the jackpot so how can you increase your chances of winning here now to weigh in his owner of stock swoosh Melissa Armo thank you very much for joining us so the odds for winning the mega million is the big jackpot that's you know ridiculous but there's also some smaller amounts that you can win as well sure we'll have to see if anyone wins tonight if it doesn't it's gonna go into next week and it could even be over one billion which would be really exciting as of right now it's just under that one billion and it's the second largest jackpot in history yeah so let's take a look at see you actually have better odds at some of these things happening to you an unprovoked shark attack that's one in 11 million getting struck by lightning one in one million and then average golfer sinking a hole in one that's one in 12,000 increases your chances well it's really no way to increase your odds but you can increase your chances by getting in a pool getting as many tickets with as many people because even that's a lot of money you can split it up friends family pools office pools here at Fox that you'll have a lot of tickets and it's just about you know trying to see if you can win there's really no way to increase your odds you just got to increase your chances I was reading I mean because there's all kinds of people trying to give advice that if you buy so you see by 10 tickets go to different locations buying those tickets it's really just it's really just luck really the people that win it's really honestly about luck even if you were a mathematician and you tried to figure it out I don't think of its random numbers well and what about that you know picking your own numbers versus letting a machine pick the numbers because I've read that that is actually better to do as well well I heard that and I also heard if you play the same number if you play the lottery in a regular basis eventually a hit but I'm really not sure if that makes a difference either I really honestly think that it's luck and obviously someone could be a very lucky person tonight particularly if it is one winner yeah but the chances of it being just one ticket one winner it's actually a greater chance that it'll be a group which is why exactly what the most fun is from the time that you buy the ticket until it goes off because you think and you dream about all the things you do with the money all the things you possibly do to change your life but you really have to protect yourself the most that you can if in fact you do with how can you do that the ways that you can protect yourself we can put some of your tips for people keep a low profile if you possibly can don't go out in the middle of the street screaming I just won that would be hard not to do that states actually allow you to be anonymous so you don't have to give your name but definitely put your social media profiles on private you don't want everyone in the world commenting and calling you make your number unlisted as well your phone number that's a good idea and then before you even collect the winnings go and see a CPA and an accountant to get some advice because they're gonna have tax implications you will have to pay taxes on it it could be as much as 40% and also before you go hog wild spending it pay down debt if you have a mortgage if you have car loans pay down any of that debt and also it's a great time to invest in the stock market a lot of money you gotta have some fun with it too a little bit of fun yeah so the mega millions drawing is tonight at 11 p.m. so you can buy tickets up until what time I don't know what time to combine them up to I think it depends on the states but you can also buy online what about that is that safe to do well I don't know how safe it is you have to check out the legitimacy of the site I know one specific New York lottery you can actually buy tickets online for the mega millions by subscribing by buying a subscriber and then there's I know at least one or two apps that you can log on to as well but only certain states will accept those well if you if you live in New York you just go out right on the street corner and buy it at most of the places but if you're out of state and you want to participate if it's not if you're out of state you can do it and that's probably one of the reasons why I think it's gonna get up to be close to that one billion because you're gonna probably have a lot of ticket sales and it's very last day with that much money good luck all right the time now is about six minutes until the top of the hour is honestly really the best policy this brand new tourism campaign turning heads for telling it like it is and social media is having a field day