The Mega Millions jackpot in the U.S has recently hit $1 Billion. If you win the jackpot, would you opt for annuity(annual payments over 29-years) or would you opt for the lump sum of $548M? ?

Fun fact: The Mega Millions annuity is paid out as one immediate payment followed by 29 annual payments. Each payment is 5% bigger than the previous one.

As a guideline, for a typical jackpot of $100 million on Mega Millions, the initial payment would be about $1.5 million. For a $1B jackpot, the first payment would be approximately $15M and will grow at a 5% rate annually until the last annual payment.