I’ll start by saying, I probably don’t play enough to win. I don’t keep up with how much the jackpot is. That is until I drive through Dallas or another major city. Then it becomes hard not to see that big billboard displaying amounts of money that most of us can only dream about! If it wasn’t bad enough that it was displayed in your local convivence store or gas station; now it’s available at the grocery store! Is this because so many peoples lives are being changed by winning the lottery? Is it because they want you to get a piece of the pie that seems to grow more and more every few days? I highly doubt it! In fact, I believe there’s a good reason they enjoy displaying how much the jackpot currently is.
Not to long ago (and probably in the near future), the jackpot of the two major lottery drawings hit the highest ever. For a simple two dollar piece of paper, you were given the chance to become a billionaire! That’s right, no more day or night job for you! Mansions and yachts will be the norm for you! I’m sure you’ll meet Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk on your way to cash the check. Well at least that was what I envisioned. People were lined up to get there shot at a piece of the jackpot. I even remember hearing a co-worker tell me how they don’t need the whole thing. All i need is a fraction of the jackpot. They would spend, in my opinion, way more than they should. However, on the news, people were acting like it was the last call for retirement savings on tickets. I can only imagine, some emptied their savings account only to find out that the jackpot went higher the day after the drawing! How could this be? So many that don’t usually play and the ones that do amplified their contributions. Surely the odds of winning were higher. Even the co-worker that played told me if they bought two tickets, their chances of winning doubled. Is that true?
After spending a total of twenty dollars on that escapade of winning a billion, I had to do a little research. Why does the jackpot keep going up, even though countless people, it seems, are buying so many tickets? Why didn’t I (or many others) break even? Should I have played more? Am I just unlucky?!
It’s all an emotional play. Numbers are almost irrelevant. Pick your numbers, pick your birthday, your dogs birthday, your enemies birthday, turns out doesn’t really matter. Overwhelmingly, most jackpots are won by the random pick feature! So your birthday isn’t unlucky, it’s just you’re unlucky! Sorry to brake it to you, but if it makes you feel any better, I’m unlucky too! The lottery wants to seem harmless. Yet, I would argue it’s keeping a large portion of the population in poverty. Why would I say that. Mainly from experience. I’ve lived in the inner city where you go into a corner (convivence) store, and most people are getting three things. A bottle of their favorite alcohol, a pack of cigarettes, or you guest it, a lottery ticket. Then when I worked in an upper middle class area, this was not the case except for local contractor type workers in the area. I can even see the difference in advertising. In the inner cities you clearly see where the jackpot is today. From the building that was selling it, a sign outside or a billboard above your head. Trying to feed that since of desperation to get a better life. Meanwhile, in the upper middle class area, it was actually against city ordinance to have certain signs displaying various things. I can just tell you, working there, I never had an urge to play the lottery, going downtown or urban areas, I would see it as my chance to get a piece! Now I see it as praying on the weak. Unless you get the multipliers for an extra dollar, you don’t get a piece of the jackpot broken down by how many tickets you get. So stop thinking you will get a piece of that. They even came out with a version of all or nothing! The people that are propping up that number you see going up multiple times a week are not millionaires trying to get rich! They know how to invest money and make their money grow. They would rather put all that money instead of on a gamble into an asset that produces an income or at least grows in value. So, you can say they gamble on themselves. Meanwhile, the people that are being targeted are poor to middle class. Some have no savings or very little. Usually have other habits that eat away at there chance of saving money. Some don’t have any money at all, yet according to ‘The Washington Post’, an article found a correlation between the poorest zip codes having the highest lottery ticket sales. What does that mean? The people who are starving will buy a lottery ticket before they buy food! Now, that we know that, when you see the number going up on the jackpot, know that poverty is alive and playing the lottery!
The people who are starving will buy a lottery ticket before they buy food!
Joe
That’s sad and everything, but how can we increase our chances of winning! Well, many financial advisors use the analogy of getting struck by lighting. You have a better chance at getting struck by lighting several times and survive, than winning the jackpot! Feeling lucky, wait until the next thunderstorm to find out… Really though, winning odds are so small it is not worth it in many situations. If you don’t have any money saved, I suggest working on that, not gambling it. If you have a house, cars paid off, saving at least 15% of your income and no debt, knock yourself out! At least at this point, you are not effecting your ability to grow your wealth on a gamble and you have little liabilities that can take away from that. If not, create your own luck by controlling the money you do have, to get in position for that money to grow. Maybe invest in a trade school like I did. Get certified in something you can grow in income with. This will also help your financial discipline. If you already know how to get and handle money effectively, if you get more, than you already know what to do with the money. Just on a bigger scale. That’s why most people that win a huge sum of money loose it. They didn’t have a grasp on the little they had, now it’s too much to maintain.
In conclusion, for most of us, the lottery is really a tax. They can throw school and veteran charities on there, but it’s still taking away from the least among us. We should donate without the string of a benefit we might win something. I will admit, I still play the lottery after it usually reaches $300M. In my mind, without creating and selling a very unique business, this amount won’t be achievable. So it is worth a few dollars every week for the sake of playing. I hope through other means I can obtain anything less than that. However, I do have a house, put 15% toward retirement and investments, all my cars are paid off and I have no debt. Since I also do my best not to eat out, it is cheaper than any one sandwich or burger I could buy. So it has no impact on my net worth at all. I could make a moral argument to not play base off what I talked about, but maybe in a casino blog… Thanks for reading and I hope you are in a good position financially and view the lottery in a similar way. Let me know what you think!
Average Joe Chronicles 