Imagine If A Week At The Best Hotel In Las Vegas Cost You Just $2.50?
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As you win larger lottery jackpots - like Maureen Smith and David Kaltschmidt's third share of the Powerball's $1.5 billion jackpot above - something extraordinary happens.
The purchasing power of the money you have drops relatively. That means that anything you buy - compared to people on an average wage of $US59,039 a year - feels like it costs much less to you.
So a $250 restaurant meal might feel like you've only spent $25.
Business Insider measured what it feels like for billionaires to buy expensive items in this way. The results are hard to comprehend for the rest of us.
As you can see here, that Las Vegas Bellagio suite is just a couple of bucks for them:
This skewed value of large sums of money explains why many lottery winners are broke after only a few years.
The true value of those dollars is lost to them, and massive dollar amounts become easier to spend without pain.
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