How to Win the Lottery
Published on - August 27th, 2008 (Modified on - December 14th, 2012) (by J.D. Roth) 
Ray Otero cannot buy a break. For the past three years, he’s spent $500 to $700 a week playing the lottery, but he’s only won big a few times: $1,000 once and $2,000 twice. Still he keeps playing. He’s sure his luck is bound to change.
Otero’s story, told in a recent New York Times article, is simultaneously funny, poignant, and exasperating. This New York City building superintendent simply wants the “easy life” for his family. He wants to find the money to move back home to Puerto Rico.
So why doesn’t he save the money from working? Because working is for suckers:
Working is for poor uneducated men — a sucker’s game, [Otero] said, where one must run increasingly fast to keep one’s place in line. “You’re making money on the one side and spending it on the other,” he said. “If all you’re doing is working, you’re never going to win.”
And so he’s poured his money into the lottery, looking for his chance to get rich quickly. So far it hasn’t worked. To make matters worse, his friend and neighbor, a doorman named Richie Randazzo, won five million dollars after only spending $30 a week on tickets. “It really isn’t fair,” Mr. Otero said. But what Mr. Otero doesn’t realize is that winning the lottery has nothing to do with luck.
Against all odds
My youngest brother, Tony, used to play the lottery. One day I had to get something out of his car, and I was shocked at the hundreds of scratch-off tickets tucked into every nook and cranny.
“Tony,” I’d said. “Why do you do this? You’re wasting your money.”
“No, I’m not,” he said. “I’ve pretty much broken even on the lottery. I’ve made as much as I’ve spent.”
I knew that this was highly improbable, but didn’t see any sense in arguing. Sure, a newcomer to playing the lottery might be able to claim she’s broken even because she’s only spent about $30 total on it, but has won fifty bucks. But the longer anyone plays, the more likely they are to be a net loser. The longer a person plays, the bigger loser they become.
Just for kicks, I looked through the New York state lottery web site. There are a variety of games offered. None of them have encouraging odds.
- The $1 scratch-off games offer odds of one in five. On average, you’d have to spend $5 to win anything, and even then you’re far more likely to win a buck or two than anything else.
- The more expensive scratch-off games ($5, $10, $20) have better odds (up to one winner in every 3.5 tickets), but more gradual payoffs. That is, it’s more difficult to win a big prize.
- The lottery drawings have even worse odds. The daily Take Five game, for example, has odds of about one in ten. But the base prize is just a free lottery ticket. The odds of winning money are one in 100!
There’s no question: playing the lottery as a strategy to gain money is a fool’s game. Play the lottery for fun if you want, but don’t do it because you think it’s going to help your financial situation. The easiest way to win the lottery is not to play.
A sure thing
If you really want to improve your finances, do something boring with your money. Put it in a savings account. Invest it in the stock market. (Hell, loan it to your brother-in-law. You’re less likely to lose the money with him than with the lottery.)
If you really want to win with your money, take advantage of the extraordinary power of compound interest. If you don’t have a Roth IRA, start one. Use it to buy indexed mutual funds. If that sounds too complicated for you, then open a savings account.
While it’s true that 3% isn’t a huge return on your money, it’s far more than the 80% loss you can expect every time you buy a lottery ticket. (See the comments for a more rigorous mathematical explanation of the actual expected returns.) If Mr. Otero would put $30,000 a year into into a savings account, he’d have about $164,000 after five years. He’d have over $350,000 after ten years. I suspect that’s plenty of money for him to fulfill his dream of moving back to Puerto Rico.
[The New York Times: Thousands later, he sees lottery's cruelty close up, via My Open Wallet — image by midweekpost]
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My plan to win the Power-Ball hundred million dollar lottery is to find the winning ticket. I image that my chances are not appreciably worse than those of someone who buys 100 tickets.
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It’s so sad that he thinks his “ticket out” is worth spending $500 to $700 per week on and ending up with absolutely nothing! If he just put that money in a high interest savings account he’d have plenty of money in a few years to move back to Puerto Rico.
But he doesn’t want to wait for a few years, so he’ll wait forever instead.
Lotteries are a form of voluntary taxation, financed with after tax dollars, which is why in Canada lottery winnings are tax free (although you pay taxes on the interest you earn on the money or on capital gains from investments you make with it).
I would not play the lottery in the US because of the taxation issue and the fact that they don’t actually pay out the full amount (you get a portion of it annually for many years or a much smaller payout) but I occasionally buy a 6/49 ticket when the prize is high, like $25 or $30 million.
Do I think I’m going to win? Only if that’s G-d’s plan for me, and I can’t win if I don’t buy a ticket, but I only need one, not $500 worth.
Or I could just get struck by lightning, but I hope that’s not in the plan, even though my chances are slightly better of having an electrifying experience than of winning the 6/49.
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A bit amusing trivia: did you know it’s possible to win $1 playing roulette, guaranteed? Here’s how:
1. Bet $1. If you win, you’ve won a dollar; stop.
2. Okay, you lost. You’re out $1. Bet $2. If you win, you’ve won a dollar; stop.
3. Okay, you lost again. You’re out $3. No problem, bet $4 . . .
You’ll eventually win. $1.
The corollary, of course, is that if you try this too many times, you’ll eventually lose enough times in a row that you won’t have enough money to make the next bet.
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Dove:
Your final sentence, which is correct, contradicts your earlier statement.
Your “strategy” is no guarantee that you will come out positive. Assume everyone plays like this — enough people will run out of money before they ever become positive that the house would still come out ahead. The only way to make this work 100% is if everyone playing had an infinite amount of money to bring to the table.
I just found an old quote on roulette that says “You cannon beat a Roulette table unless you steal money from it.” Seems appropriate, but I think that the statement can be expanded to any game where the house has an advantage, and my understanding is that the lottery has just about the biggest house advantage to be found anywhere (28% at the best state lotteries versus 5% for roulette.)
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This discussion made me recall a fantastic statement that Rolf Potts made about the lottery in his book, Vagabonding. Luckily, he posted an excerpt on his blog:
http://www.vagablogging.net/you-have-already-won-the-lottery.html
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I think the lottery is a waste of money, and if it becomes a weekly habit, the amount spent per week can be invested in something thats actually going to make money. However, I do believe in pitching in for office or co-worker lottery buy-ins since it would feel completely terrible if everyone was in on it but myself and one of the numbers actually hit. I can’t imagine being the only one remaining in the office after a complete exodus or worse, everyone continuing to work and having to deal with gloating. I do continue to say that if I won the lottery, my spending habits would remain the same and I would continue to work.
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I have a friend who’s brother won a large lottery. He saw a number of things happen very quickly:
- Problems in relationships become magnified, the brother and wife were having issues, and now they could afford to divorce each other so a year or two later they did.
- Family often expects a share of the winnings. The brother was happy to hand out $10,000 checks to his brothers and sisters and the wife’s brothers and sisters that Christmas, only to find that a few of their siblings weren’t only ungrateful, they were downright indignant that that’s all he gave them and they felt they deserved much more!
- It becomes really hard to teach your kids about the value of work and being frugal with your money when they see you winning a lottery. They get a real sense of entitlement. Couple this with the stress and guilt of divorce, other cousins and relatives hassling them, and it’s even harder.
- Friends and relatives pop out of the woodwork with great deals, typically bringing some shyster banker or lawyer to the table who has convinced them that they have a great deal for you, and of course a nice kickback for the friend or relative (typically tens of thousands of dollars). To the friend or relation, it’s a win/win since the lottery winner gets a great deal and they get a nice “finders” fee. How many of these ideas do you imagine really make any money for the lottery winner?
All in all, is it any wonder that many of these folks who win go under in a couple of years.
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If you’re, say, an electrical engineer, your odds of getting a million dollars by working are much better than your odds of getting a million dollars by playing the lottery. If you’re, say, a hairdresser, this is not necessarily true.
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Wow. I’m really surprised at the amount of sanctimonious replies here. “A tax on the stupid” – Don’t fall down off that high horse, y’all, you’re liable to break your neck.
Yes, I play the lottery. No, I don’t go out to eat very often, nor to the movies. How many people here that made those sorts of comments go to the movies or rent a movie once a week? Or smoke cigarettes? That’s more than the $2 I spend on the lottery each week, yet somehow *your* money is so much better spent than mine.
For me, it’s entertainment. I get to daydream. I get to live in the future a little bit. My odds aren’t appreciably better if I buy one ticket than if I buy ten, so I just buy the one for each drawing. And I feel a little bit better knowing that about $1/week goes toward state programs that I’m all too happy to support. Also, like Kittie’s grandmother, I’ve learned how to create a simple spreadsheet by detailing what I’d spend the winnings on, creating a cell that sums how much certain cells would be, how much others would be, what would be the interest of the lump payout of one year, etc.
I agree that in Mr. Otero’s case, the money could probably be better spent, but who am I to say? It’s his money and his life. I’ve made poor money decisions, but that’s why I’m here at JD’s site, to help myself, not peer down my nose at “the sad” and “the stupid”.
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It really saddens me to see people who appear to be fairly poor (yeah yeah, assumptions are bad, w/e, we all make them) wasting their money on this. And the convenience store owners egg them on! I had one owner try to convince me to buy a lottery ticket with my change of a dollar. I told him why take the risk when I can invest this dollar and know for a fact that I will get a better return?
I don’t think he understood what I meant…you see, for these people the only way for them to get rich is to “get rich quick”, which in their situation means zero effort on their behalf. So in other words, they are waiting for a miracle. This sort of miraculous thinking is part of what drags down our economy. Don’t just sit there waiting for good fortune to find you–go out there and carve your own path.
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I guess I’m one of those suckers who buys lottery tickets. Not every day or every week but sometimes when I’m in a good mood when I’m walking home from work I’ll go into this gas station on the way and get exactly $2 of tickets. So far I haven’t won while living in this town, but I did a similar thing when I lived in Chicago and won 70 bucks or so (matched 4 numbers). Probably I’m about even so it’s a cheap form of entertainment.
Oh yes and drinking is bad for your health, you shouldn’t eat potato chips, and jaywalking is against the law.
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What everybody who dreams about winning the lottery forgets is the background of the biggest U.S. lottery winner (so far)
He is a businessman who had the discipline and work ethic to start his first business at age 15 and build his to the point where his net worth was very comfortable *before* he won the lottery.
Yet he managed to lose all his prior net worth, his lottery winnings, and many prior relationships (e.g. his marriage)
Don’t kid yourself – if he couldn’t be a “successful” lottery winner with his “pulled myself up by my bootstraps” background, you can’t either.
Unless you want to spend your life permanently on the road away from family and friends (and every hustler in the world) who *will* see you as an easy mark.
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I have to agree with SamTheButcher about the “tax on stupid” criticism being a bit excessive. Throwing away $1 once in a while on the lottery is no more stupid than the less than perfect financial choices that almost all of us have made and continue to make.
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@SamTheButcher – I don’t think the $2/week you spend falls into the stupidity tax bracket, but $500-700/week as in the original story certainly does! I’m only an ocassional player myself, but when I do buy a ticket, I get to spend a couple of days playing “what if” From an entertainment standpoint, I consider it better bang for my buck than a night at the movies. The California lottery (where I live) used to run ads saying things like “you can’t win if you don’t play” – certainly a true statement, if somewhat disingeneous. Spending a small and affordable amount on a chance doesn’t seem like a crime to me. However, spending $500-700/week and then complaining about it, that’s a different story. The linked article says Mr. Otero nets $40k/year (plus a free apartment) and he spent $30k last year on the Lottery. “But working is for poor uneducated men — a sucker’s game, he said” Yea, right…
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$500-700/week on the lottery is sad to hear about. $5/week is a cheap dream, but $500-700/week? Sigh.
We buy lottery tickets once in a great while, when the Powerball payout gets historically high. Then we spend a few hours talking about how we’d change our lives if we won. We’ve found it a very good tool for pulling out of day-to-day practical thinking and putting all our dreams out there as possible.
If we’d do a 180-turn in our lives if we had “enough money”, we must be pretty unhappy or off-track. What can we do NOW to start that turn, even if it’s a much slower turn? What activities can we add to our lives right now to fulfill those dreams? What’s missing in our lives that we love or want or miss and what can we do about it, even on a small scale?
I think of each lottery ticket as cheap marriage therapy and DIY life coaching.
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I enjoy spending one or two bucks on the lottery when I vacation in Florida. It’s like, while I’m in a pleasant place, I’ll dream, for a moment, a pleasant dream. But that amounts to about $2 a year that I give to their education fund. No biggie.
Now, big money, or spending consistently, those are different things altogether.
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While I wish that people were better educated about the lottery, I approve of it as a voluntary method of funding government programs. My husband and I play our state lottery and the megamillions — one ticket per draw, every week. Simply, the utility of the amount of money we spend on tickets is quite low for us (it’s a small portion of our entertainment budget), but the utility of the winnings would be tremendous. A mathematician friend of a friend made that same point on his blog; I can’t find the link right now, darn it.
A study by Carnegie Mellon this year looked at why poor people are more likely to play the lottery: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080724102945.htm . No surprise: they’re buying hope. MY hope is that the money pumped into the education system by lotteries will allow them to teach responsible personal finance as part of the curriculum. Which of us is more delusional?
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well, if my ticket for tonight’s megamillions hits, I just won’t tell anyone and go travel the world for a few years. that oughta keep the freeloaders at bay.
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I buy a $1 scratch ticket every now and then just for kicks, but I’m well aware that I will likely lose. It’s depressing to walk into a convenience store to pick up a soda and see people buying 20+ lottery tickets.
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That is shocking, and it is absolutely an addiction. This story leads me to the conclusion that a tragic amount of people cannot control themselves in this regard. Heck, he could currently save that money in Icelandic banks and get 15% (but they only have insurance for like the first 20 grand).
Jerry
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My boss is addicted to the lottery. Not in the sense that he spends tons of money purchasing tickets, he in fact buys very few tickets per week. The problem is that he spends most of his time, *and* that of an employee, calculating the odds that this or that set of numbers will be the winning one. So far that’s roughly 500 MB of Excel spreadsheets, and counting. Were one to compute the amount he’s lost over the years by not dedicating himself to his business, plus what he pays to that employee for doing basically nothing important, and the total would be astonishing.
Why do I still work there? Well, the job is easy and right now I need the money. Good thing I’m not the guy doing lottery calculations 7 hours/day…
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Wow! This is an amazing story about someone who spends more than $25,000 a year trying to win the lottery. It is his money, so he is certainly welcome to do with it as he pleases.
Instead of a long winded post, please check out a recent update to my website that puts a lot of the social, political, legal and statistical aspects of the lottery in perspective. This link takes you directly to the page.
http://www.frugal-living-freedom.com/powerball.html
I use the California lottery as an example on the page, and I also discuss how the odds of winning are not advertised correctly by the state. There is a link to the “odds of winning” page, or just click this link to go directly there:
http://www.frugal-living-freedom.com/odds-of-winning-the-lottery.html
The whole thing preys on the hope that we humans have – tomorrow will be better than today. It’s a fool’s game, and there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of players.
I believe in more deliberate actions to achieve wealth – something that is much more within my control and influence than simply “playing numbers”.
Clair
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$500 to $700 per week? Holy… cow…
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I spoke with my good friend and neighbor about this situation recently. He had the best observation I have heard yet.
“If this guy can spend $500 to $700 a week on the lottery, he don’t need to win the lottery.”
Clair
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First of all I would like to say that everythings good when done in moderation.I think Mr. Ortero should carefuly study the lotto before spending another dime. I did so for 7 months and have finally won. Today I am $4 million dollars richer than I was 2 months ago. So the lottery is for those who dont want to spend the rest of their life working hard only to make someone else richer. I’m living proof of that, so stop hatin on Mr. otero and get back to work!
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To Andrea.s:
So what’s your big secret? We’d all love to know how to guarantee a big lottery win.
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To the man who said saving is boring : maybe so, but you will be like my daughter who said it was boring. She now comes hollering to me when an emergency happens. She should have been bored. My answer is now no. I think she’s getting the idea.
The man who plays the lottery and who doesn’t want to work is an idiot. Let’s see what happens to him in the long run.
Remember the couple who sold their house to play the lottery? They didn’t win, except for one ticket worth $10,000. Their house was certainly worth more than that.
You, Mr. Otero, deserve what happens to you.
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Another exciting and entertaining article by JD.
Somehow, JD has this “magical” talent to get people involved in the articles he posts.
After a friend bought his lottery ticket I asked, “Do you really expect to win?”. He quickly replied, “Of course, NOT”. And then, he spent a few minutes giving me a lecture on all the odds against anyone winning. The, I asked, “Then, if you are so certain you are NOT going to win, why do you spend your dollar on a ticket?”. He looked at me just as if had benn hit by lightning and said, “I t doen’t make sense, right? But deep inside, I hope I could win”.
That applies to those who give the advice to paay for FUN. That’s pure LIE! They play because deep inside they HOPE they could win. They are just too ashamed (and lacking in confidence = they care too much about what others think about them and they don’t want to appear ‘silly’) and come up with this “have-fun-playing” philosophy. Where is the fun in wasting your dollar BELIEVING you are going to lose? .
Anything to do with the Law of Attraction?
(you get what you focus on, you get what you believe) ???
Great article, JD.
Leo.
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I just won on a scratch $50,000 i will probably get about 38K with taxes and everything.
I’ve been playing for 6 months now ..i buy a scratch ticket every day at lunch ($3)and even if i hadnt won the 50K i would’ve still made extra $ with the winnings
im putting it for downpayement to buy a house!
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As a lottery retailer, I have seen there ARE strategies to get more winners in all the lotto games.
So if you think it’s totally random, you are wrong.
I have seen people who win MORE than other players BECAUSE they know how to pick their numbers according to years of lottery research.
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Well BJ as an interested observer, what are the great strategies for winning at the lottery? Please tell all we would really like to know.
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I think both work and playing the lottery is “a suckers game”. Actually anything to do with money is! The whole idea of money is a suckers game. But that aside, I don’t know why mr. otero is spending $700/ week try to get rich. If he makes $700+ per week, thats over 2.4 times the minimum wage that he is spending right there!!!(40 hour week)So he is ALREADY rich in my book
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Obviously this reply is a little late but here it is…
Stop spending $700.00 a month on the lottery and go to Las Vegas.
Take $700.00 and go to any craps table in Las Vegas.
Ok, Get 100.00 in $5.00 chips.
Place a $5 bet on the PASS LINE in Craps.
If you loose, then bet $10 on the PASS LINE.
If you loose, then bet $20 on the PASS LINE.
Etc. Etc.
IN other words, double your bet everytime you loose starting with $5.
You WILL WIN eventually.
You’ll make a fortune playing this way.
Enough to live on and then some.
Good Luck buddy.
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Hi Jim777,
the Casinos are on to that trick. First off, you are mathematically guaranteed to have an indefinitely long string of losses (more than enough to swallow up whatever you have in the bank and then some). Secondly, they don’t let you bet more than a certain amount. You’ll definitely lose all your money.
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I’m in awe that this man makes so much over $700 a week that he can spend that amount weekly, gambling. Oh, what I would do with an extra $2,000 to $2,400 a month…
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I think that playing the lottery is just the matter of fact of risking your money to win a larger amout wich is good in one point but not so good in another point .because in order to win you must loose too.! like Mr.Otero was doing spending lots of money but only getting a few dollars back from what he had spent
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A lot of things in my life suck. But I won’t complain. Don’t have any bad habits, to speak of. But the one joy I have is buying a $1 ticket. I don’t scheme about winning big, but it’s fun to dream and fantasize once in a while. I might spend $30-$50 a year on tickets, but this is realatively cheap compared to being hooked on alcohol, drugs or worse.
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Instead of playing the powerball twice a week, I put $2 away a week (or whatever I would have paid to play). That way I’m not losing out. Also when I make a purchase and write it down in my check register I round up the price of the purchase to the next dollar, it has saved me almost $100 since I started doing it 2 months ago. Change adds up quickly!
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I think that the lottery is a fine and fair gambling game, just as any casino is. Any time you buy a ticket you are taking a risk of losing of course. But just buy $1 or $2 a week or so and you will be fine. I bet most of the people commenting on this blog about how much a waste of money the lottery is, probably spend $4 to $5 a day on cigerettes or alcohol. The lottery is a game of chance that is all. you don’t play you will never win, you do play a $1 you will probably never win either, but you at least have that 1 in 500,000,000 chance of winning the jackpot. Of course saving your money in an account is the best way to save and accumulate wealth. But hey if you want to spend a $1 or so a week on the lottery I think that is fine. Now people do go overboard on gambling that is called addiction, that is there own fault and no one should feel sorry for them at all.They need to learn to control themselves.
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The lottery is a voluntary regressive tax on the poor and stupid and nothing more.
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I used to think the same way about the lotto. that it was bad.. I decided to play $3 a week. After only 2 weeks of playing. I won bejeweled a Texas $30,000 scratch off. After tax I got a BIG fat check for $22,500.00. Nice return. Well I have stuck to my only $3 a week and have won a total of $39,000.00.. So I guess as long as you don’t go crazy ..$3 bucks a week isn’t bad..
By the way I paid off ALL my debts..So, I guess I’m a super lucky guy..
BUT people should limit themselves when playing. What I did was cut out a box of cigs a week to pay for the lotto..So now I’m getting healthier also..
Just wanted to share that..
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See, you all cite these stories where people have won and now they’re miserable. You know why? It’s not the lottery. It’s the people. THEY’RE STUPID.
Now look at cruzer. He’s perfectly fine, even BETTER than before. He’s proof that if you’re INTELLIGENT, winning the lottery is great.
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Tom is right. If winning the lottery is going to ruin your life that much, then you must be doing something wrong. And if getting some money is going to turn your partner and friends against you…well, maybe you should reconsider the people around you.
Not that I’m saying you should go spending $500 to $700 a week on it. I just wanted to point out that the lottery isn’t going to land you on the road to poverty if you can play it smart.
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Obviously Mr Otero plays the lottery like 99.9% of players… picks numbers/combinations at random. I truly believe there is order in the “lottery” chaos. I moved to TX in 2005 and got interested in playing the TX Lottery in 2008. I browsed Amazon.com and found “2008 Visual Lottery Guide and Aide.” I studied and applied some of the strategies from the book. Since March 2008, I won 4 of 6, five times, and 5 of 6, once. Not to mention countless 3 of 3. I truly feel I will get 6 of 6 hopefully sometime soon. It’s a good book for those of us who enjoy the lottery. By the way, I did not spent $500 to $700 a week. Sincerely, Will
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Where is he getting the $500-$700 a week to buy lottery tickets? He’s a janitor? I couldn’t do that, I’d need that money to live on. Add it up and monthly that’s $2,166.00-$3,033.00 or yearly $26,000.00-$36,400.00 a year, not exactly easy street, but with the cost of everything how can he come up with $500-$700 a week to spend on the lottery? Unless he also receives government subsidies for rent & food, how he does it makes no sense to me. Between us my husband and I slightly more then this man and I play may $2-4 dollars a week and that seems a lot and a couple of times a year I go wild and buy a scratch ticket or too. I doubt I spend $500 a year on the lottery though we may come close to $500 including what my hubby plays. Though lately I’ve been skipping my weekly number just to save a dollar. This includes gas because sometimes I would run out in the evening just to be sure I bought my ticket, but now cash and credit is tight. And I’ve noticed my husband hasn’t been buying an occasional scratch ticket lately either. We need to pay down our debts in order to have some spare cash to gamble with. It’s crazy. . .
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I might start doing what Joslyn does (see quote below), it makes more sense then playing the lottery.
“Instead of playing the powerball twice a week, I put $2 away a week (or whatever I would have paid to play). That way I’m not losing out. Also when I make a purchase and write it down in my check register I round up the price of the purchase to the next dollar, it has saved me almost $100 since I started doing it 2 months ago. Change adds up quickly!”
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It’s true that very addictive to play lottery, I do spend $5 to $10 per week about 2 draws here in Vancouver.B.C. but if you don’t play you don’t win , is that right to all readers. And I played lottery as BC49 only which the odds is very low as compared to national lottery of 6/49 , let’s say 1:2 million as compared to national lottery of 1:13 million. The probable way to win , I did won once last year of $750 as 5 numbers I almost hit the jackpot of $2 million.
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Boy Misery does love company, Listen to you people!
I do agree that is alot of money, But it isnt ours and it isnt any of our business how much people spend on anything. Damn If you dont like the lottery, then dont play, If you do. play its simple. do what you want and leave other peoples business to them and mind your own……WHO CARES WHAT EVERYONE ELSE DOES…..
Jones trying to keep up with the Johnsons or vise versa What ever…..Get over it.
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Just clicked this in the sidebar, so I’m late on commenting, but wow. He has an addiction, badly. What he said:
“Working is for poor uneducated men — a sucker’s game”
Replace the word “working” with “The lotto” and you have a more accurate statement. Lotteries rely on people being either ignorant of probability or ignoring them because of the psychological thrill of the big win. THAT is a sucker’s game. There is a reason lotteries are called a “tax on the stupid.”
Play for fun, fine. Personally, I buy a ticket when the cost/benefit ratio is even or better. If the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 13 million, and a ticket is $2, a jackpot 26 million or over will entice me to buy. I’m not perfect, of course, and sometimes I will buy if it’s slightly less than even, but I only do so if I have extra “mad money.”
I don’t like to tell people what to do with their own money, but I do think people need to be informed when they make choices. Your “luck” is not going to change. Every ticket has the same odds of winning, and those odds are quite low.
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$500 a week he needs help.
odds of winning lotto are something like 1 in 20 million. you have a better chance of getting hit by lightening which is 1 in 1.9 million.
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