News writer, Interviewer
Every era ends. Some end with a bang, others with a quiet final draw. Cash4Life and Lucky for Life are bowing out, but not before leaving behind a trail of life-changing moments, lucky accidents, and a few stories worth telling.
So before the curtain falls for good, let's look back at what these two games gave us.
A Bergen County player's perfect timing
Could the timing have been any more dramatic? On February 20, 2026, a Bergen County, New Jersey Lottery player matched all five numbers — 51, 54, 57, 59, and 60 — plus the Cash Ball (03), to win Cash4Life's $1,000 a Day for Life grand prize, worth $7,000,000 in cash. The winning ticket was sold at Krauszer's Liquor Wine & Food Store in Lyndhurst, which earned a $30,000 retailer bonus.
This win came with just two Cash4Life draws left before the game ended for good.
"We always say that anything can happen in Jersey," said New Jersey Lottery Executive Director James Carey. With Millionaire for Life launching just two days later on February 22, the Bergen County win felt less like a coincidence and more like a send-off.
Pennsylvania's first-ever $7 million Cash4Life winner
In Wind Gap, Pennsylvania, a quick ice cream and donut run changed everything for Monroe County couple Stephen and Shana Juhasz. On January 3, 2025, their ticket, bought on impulse at a GIANT Food Store in Northampton County, matched the winning Cash4Life numbers.
It was Pennsylvania's first-ever $7 million lump-sum Cash4Life top prize since joining the multi-state game in 2015.
Stephen's reaction said it all:
I screamed and ran out of work. I called my boss and told him I had to leave.
After taxes, the couple took home an estimated $5.1 million. Their plans: pay off student loans, invest, and take their kids to Disney. Not a bad return on a donut run.
The Illinois man who won in Michigan by accident
Sometimes a mistake is the best thing that can happen to you. Michael Sopejstal, a 60-year-old from Illinois, came to Michigan every few weeks to eat at his favorite restaurant. He always grabbed a Lucky for Life ticket while he was there.
On one visit, he asked the retailer for a ticket covering 10 draws. The retailer accidentally printed 10 lines for a single draw instead. Sopejstal shrugged and kept it.
That ticket matched all five white balls in the September 17, 2023, drawing, winning him $25,000 a year for life. He took the lump sum: $390,000. His plans? Travel, then save the rest.
A wrong ticket. A right outcome.
The siblings who shared the same lucky numbers
​​William Fralick and his sister Pamela McClure, both from Brockton, Massachusetts, played the same Lucky for Life numbers. They always had. The numbers were family birthdays. On August 25, 2024, those numbers paid off. Both siblings matched all five white balls, missing only the Lucky Ball, each winning $25,000 a year for life.
Both chose the lump sum: $390,000 each, before taxes. Fralick bought his ticket at Star Food Mart in Brockton. McClure got hers at a 7-Eleven in Abington. Two stores, two winners, one family.
It raises a question: what are the odds? Apparently, better than you'd think in Massachusetts.
Two games, one common story
Cash4Life launched in 2014. Lucky for Life started even earlier, debuting in New England in 2009 before going multi-state. Both games followed the same arc. They started small, expanded to more states, moved from a few draws per week to daily drawings, and built loyal player bases along the way.
Then sales began to slip. Lottery officials across multiple states acknowledged that while these games had a dedicated following, "sales gradually declined over time as players showed through their purchase habits that they preferred other games," as the Iowa Lottery put it.
The writing was on the wall.
What they leave behind
Both games pioneered the "lifetime prize" format at scale. The idea that a lottery ticket could mean $1,000 a day, not a lump sum check you might blow through, but a daily income for life, was genuinely new when these games launched. That concept resonated.
It also evolved. Millionaire for Life, the game replacing both Cash4Life and Lucky for Life, offers $1,000,000 a year for life as its top prize. Tickets cost $5, up from $2 for Lucky for Life. Cash values for top prizes jump from $7,000,000 to $18,000,000.
Could Cash4Life and Lucky for Life have paved the way for Millionaire for Life? It's hard to argue otherwise. They proved the market existed. They showed what worked and what needed improving. The new game is, in many ways, the sum of what those two games taught.
The era is over. The experiment was a success. And somewhere, a Bergen County player is still processing what happened two days before the game he played ended forever.
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