I didn’t realize it until today but rising interest rates are having an affect I didn’t recognize. I discovered it today when I looked up the powerball payouts for tonight. As I’m sure you know, tonight’s jackpot is one billion dollars, and I hope you have a ticket. But here’s what I noticed, the cash value is $497.3 million. That’s less than 50%. It has generally been in the sixty to sixty five percent range for quite a while because of low interest rates. This actually makes sense when you consider that what the cash option is is the present value of an annuity paid out over a number of years. I don’t want to get into the weeds because you probably don’t care, but I studied it both in Engineering Economics and during my MBA program. Suffice it to say that the higher the interest rates the lower the present value of that income will be.