A 71-year-old Michigan woman won $100,000 a year for life in Millionaire For Life
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A 71-year-old Michigan woman learned she had won $100,000 a year for life from a pop-up that appeared when she logged in to do her daily spin.
The Ingham County woman matched all five white balls in the August 20 Millionaire for Life drawing, the Michigan Lottery said. She bought the ticket online at MichiganLottery.com and chose to stay anonymous.
"I've been playing Millionaire For Life since the game started earlier this year," she told lottery officials. "Every morning when I wake up, I log in to my Michigan Lottery account to do my Daily Spin to Win."
"The morning after the drawing, a pop-up came up when I logged in notifying me of a prize. I thought it said I won $2,000 and I was excited about that. Then I realized I had actually won over $2 million! It was unbelievable," she said.
The winning white balls were 01-16-26-40-44. She visited lottery headquarters to claim the prize and took annual payments of $100,000 for 20 years or life, whichever runs longer, over a one-time cash option payment of $2.2 million. She plans to finish home renovations and save the rest.
This is the second time a Michigan player has taken the second-tier prize since Millionaire for Life launched on February 22. A Charlevoix County woman won the first on May 21 with a ticket from the Mancelona North EZ Mart at 8150 U.S. 131 in Mancelona.
Seven players have hit the second prize tier in 200 Millionaire For Life drawings
Millionaire for Life draws nightly at 11:15 p.m. and is sold in 31 states at $5 a play. Through the September 9 drawing, the game has run 200 nights and produced seven Match 5 winners, about one every 29 drawings. Michigan has two of the seven winners.
The five that came before hers landed on May 8, May 11, May 18, May 21, and May 29, a run of five inside three weeks, and then the tier went silent for nearly three months until August 20. Another player hit it last week on September 2.
Matching five white balls without the Millionaire Ball odds are 1 in 5,727,645. The jackpot sits at 1 in 22,910,580, exactly four times longer. The jackpot has been won three times so far, most recently on September 8 in Maple Heights, Ohio.
| August 20 drawing | Prize | Winners |
|---|---|---|
| Match 5 + Millionaire Ball | $1M a year for life | 0 |
| Match 5 | $100,000 a year ($2,200,000 cash) | 1 |
| Match 4 + MB | $7,500 | 4 |
| Match 4 | $500 | 21 |
| Match 3 + MB | $250 | 237 |
| Match 3 | $50 | 943 |
| Match 2 + MB | $25 | 4,387 |
| Match 2 | $8 | 16,304 |
| Match 1 + MB | $8 | 28,061 |
Millionaire for Life replaced Lucky for Life and Cash4Life in February and raised the ticket from $2 to $5. Our guide to playing it covers the full prize table, and how it stacks up against Powerball and Mega Millions comes down to trading a smaller top prize for far shorter odds.
Sources
Lansing State Journal: Ingham County woman wins $100,000 a year for life
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Frequently Asked Questions
How much did the Ingham County woman win?
She won $100,000 a year for 20 years or life, whichever is longer, the second-tier prize in Millionaire for Life. She could have taken a one-time cash payment of $2.2 million and turned it down. The 71-year-old chose to stay anonymous and said she plans to finish home renovations and save the rest.
What are the odds of winning $100,000 a year on Millionaire for Life?
One in 5,727,645. That means matching all five white balls from 1 to 58 while missing the Millionaire Ball, which is drawn from 1 to 5. The tier is four times easier to hit than the jackpot at 1 in 22,910,580, because there are four wrong Millionaire Ball numbers for each right one.
Is the annuity or the cash option better on a $100,000-a-year prize?
On taxes alone, the annuity. Twenty years of $100,000 nets about $1.58 million in Michigan after federal and state tax, against roughly $1.34 million for the $2.2 million lump sum, because the lump lands in the 37% federal bracket and $100,000 a year never leaves the 22% bracket. That gap ignores anything a lump sum could earn if invested.
Jessie Jurado is a news writer who covers new scratch-off launches, state lottery guides, taxes on winnings, news, and much more. She joined ScratchCheck in 2026 and writes the site's state-by-state coverage.
