How Late Can I Buy A Powerball Ticket Saturday In Virginia?

You'll have at least one requirement to win the nearly $500M Powerball jackpot aside from coming up with the winning numbers: Buying your Powerball ticket.

In Virginia, you can buy your ticket and pick your winning Powerball numbers until 9:59 p.m., just an hour before the numbers are pulled.

Saturday's Powerball winning numbers are worth "only" an estimated $478 million, a far cry from the $1.6 billion that went to the lucky people who won January's jackpot.

• Click to see winning Powerball numbers for Saturday, July 30, as soon as they're pulled.

(If you don't want to wait for the $478 to be doled out over years, you can take the instant payout -- at the reduced total of $330.6 million.)

The Powerball game is played by matching all five white balls in any order and the red Powerball number.Powerball drawings are held every Wednesday and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. Eastern time. Each ticket costs $2.

Find out where you can buy your Powerball tickets.

Let's be clear about something: Your odds of picking the winning numbers to win the Powerball jackpot are slightly better than the odds of Donald Trump washing a Muslim's feet with his hair or giving Mexican laborers back massages.

More precisely: The odds of picking the correct Powerball grand prize numbers are one in 292,201,338.

So, what if you win.

First, do what should be obvious: hire an attorney and a financial planner.

Next, it's recommended that you do not (that's do not) invest in methamphetamines. A Georgia man who won $3 million with a scratch-off lottery ticket pleaded guilty last week to using his winnings to buy and sell meth, so there's the proof that it's a bad idea.

You have two choices when you claim your prize: the full value paid in 30 installments over 29 years, or a one-time lump sum that is smaller than the actual total.

Then there are the taxes. The federal tax on lottery winnings is 25 percent. Then, any extra income taxes like state or city would apply.