The lottery. An idiot tax or a glimmer of hope? Do you play it? What are your reasons? Have you ever won on it and if so how much? Personally i buy one ticket a week, 2 if i'm really broke and need some cash. But why is it i spend more the less i have? I often see OAPs spending £5 - £10 a go (once up to £20!!!) on the lottery at the local super market. Where do they get all there money from, and if they can afford to blow that much on tickets, they must have quite a bit of money spare in the first place! So WHY BUY A TICKET? And going on from this (not quite related i know but stick with me...), I'm a fireman in the UK. I've been to a few homes now that are owned by (how do you put it?)... the less fortunate. The houses are dumps, the kids (and there are quite a few) are wearing tatty clothes and basically the place just needs sorting out. But i have begun to notice a few things. The mother and father are both smoking like the clappers (fags aint cheap). There are loads of empty bottles of drink in the lounge (once again, a bottle of vodka isnt cheap) and most alarmingly they have a wide screen, full surround sound TV with DVD player and all the trimmings, a PC in the corner and the world largest sound system! I mean...I DONT EVEN HAVE ALL THAT! Why do these people (and a lot of others i'm sure) find it so important to have the above things as opposed to the things that really matter, ie putting decent clothes on your kids backs? Just my little rant, but there you go. Your thoughts?
I'm officially elligable to play the lottery on the ninth. Will I? Nope, not a chance in the world. It just seems like an aweful hobby.
Of course, on paper, it's better to save the pound. But if you think about it in real life terms - a pound here and there is irrelevant, winning millions of pounds isn't.
One person buys a lottery ticket each week for 5 years. Another takes the same amount of money 5 years of lottery tickets would cost and invests it. You tell me who the smarter person is.
To invest 260 dollars or spend it on lottery tickets over the course of five years. . . I'd say it's a toss up. That's not exactly a huge amount of money to invest. And maybe he has fun playing the lotto. Or maybe he's a really smart guy with idiosyncrasies, and feels like he has to play the lotto. Maybe he's obsessive compulsive and thinks the world will end if he stops. Oh, yeah, and also, he might win.
The odds are just too great, in my opinion. I buy scratch-off tickets once a year to put in the Christmas stockings (all adults, no children ), and that's it. A janitor in my company won $2 million on a scratch-off ticket a few years ago, so you never know! But I don't have that kind of luck, so I don't bother.
Some people play with the misguided thought that they're helping schools or whatever the government has said the money was going toward. I just like to watch the looks on thier faces when they don't win.
Some body will win your, chances are as good as anyone’s. That being said I don’t play every week but buy one every now and then and never more then 5$ worth. It seams like it’s always the little old lady who buys one ticket for her birthday that wins.
i like to play the scratch off's every once in a while. for my 18th birthday my mom bought me a card that i got $100 off of. everyonce in a while its a fun source of entertainment, regularly (more than once a week) its a bad habit/thing and should be brought under control IMO.
I kind of look at it this way. I spend 2-3$ a month thats about it. Think of the money others spend on cigarettes, alcohol, whatever. Its a small thing with a potentially huge payoff.
