"So a slow climb to a billion is arguably the game working as designed, not underperforming. "
Not really design, but I think MM was hoping that ticket sales wouldn't have dropped as much as they did. They're making more money on each drawing for a given jackpot, but it has now been over 18 months since their last jackpot over $1 billion. While I think they hoped for more ticket sales, I think both games are designed to occasionally produce the larger than average jackpots that results in unusually high ticket sales. Sales for PB have also been declining, and when it got past $1.5 billion just before Christmas the highest sales didn't even get to $250 million. F or comparison, PB's first huge jackpot of $1.6 billion had sales of $880 million. We really can't have much of an idea what kind of sales MM will get for a $1.5 billion jackpot, but under the new format the probability that can give us a PB jackpot of $1.5 billion would give us a MM jackpot of about $3 billion (same total ticket sales, with about twice as much cash for the jackpot from each ticket). Two or three drawings of $2 billion or more leading to a win at about $3 billion should result in sales that more than make up for the longer wait, and I'm sure the people behind MM are drooling at the possibility.
"I'm on a strict budget, and the $5/ticket is not worth the odds of the game regardless of the jackpot. "
Get back to us when we do see a MM jackpot that gets past $2 billion. Or 2.3ish, since the current annuity:cash ratio means we need about that for a cash jackpot of $1 billion.
"At my age, just winning a few hundred thousand "
One of the few upsides of getting old is that we need less money for normal life. We (statisically) don't need an income for nearly as long as we did at 40 or 50, and other than inflation we don't need as much every year because we can't play as hard as we used to. That said, even if I only lived another week after collecting a big jackpot that's still enough time for some serious charitable giving.
"A 2 Step win would be plenty for my remaining years. "
Maybe, but you don't know how many years you have left and you probably don't know what the final years will cost. My wife and I both have a parent into their mid-90s and both of those parents are now in long term care facilities costing over 150k per year. While they're both experiencing some mental decline neither of them has a medical issue that suggests they'll die soon, so one or both could live another 5 years or possibly even get somewhere past 100. In theory you'll get taken care of even if you're broke, but unless you know when you'll die still having enough to pay your current bills can be rather useful. Perhaps the worst thing would be still having all your marbles and having to live on your own, where assistance is less available if the savings that once seemed adequate have gone to medical bills. One way or another you'll get by (or voluntarily quit the game), but there's no stage of life where you can have too much money.
