Do you buy lottery tickets? Why or why not?

Nope. That dollar will buy me lunch on campus.

I hate lottery tickets because the same people who waste their money on them are the same people who win.

hmmm I buy them once or twice a year, mostly for stocking stuffers!
I’ve always heard of the lottery referred to as “taxes for the ignorant” ... your chances are winning are so slim. BUT those very few people who win, bless them!!! lol.

Gotta be in to win! I buy tickets for the New Zealand lottery probably once or twice a month. Considering I’m dipping into a much smaller pool than other countries like Australia or the US, the chances are a little better.

I have known quite a few people to win large jackpots and someone wins millions each week. I can afford to buy them and enjoy the few days of fantasising about the $22 million I may potentially win.

I don’t buy them, and I really don’t pay that much attention to them.

No, because I’m (probably) not going to win.

@Allie That’s why I don’t buy them! Same reason I hate going to the casino. The few times we’ve been, I only play the quarter slots. Each quarter that plunks into the machine, I cringe and think of how they all add up and what I could be doing with them. Even though I once one a hundred bucks on slots, I still can’t get past it.

I do, because I apparently like to throw my fucking money away.

I’m bitter. Leave me.

Though, I am quite lucky with regards to scratch-offs. I almost always turn a profit.

I like the scratch ‘n win ones don’t judge me! But, we don’t buy them often, just every once in a while.
Now, if we bought them constantly, then there’d be an issue since that money spent would add up.

Each time you get into a car that is going to travel on a road, you have approximately a 1 in 25,000 chance of dying in an accident. Yet we are not afraid to get in cars, because the chance of dying is so remote.

Each time you buy a lottery ticket you have, depending upon the game, about a 1 in 10,000,000 chance of winning, yet we somehow believe we will.

I have heard the saying that it is a tax not on the ignorant, but on the innumerate.

I don’t. I never have. Looking at the CA Lottery website, the results just make it look like a dumb move.
Mega Millions, for example, the biggest one, had 133,073 winners. Yet, the average amount that they all won was not even $4. Then put into account how many thousands of people didn’t even get 1 ball right.

Your chance of winning the BIG one for Mega Millions is about 1 in 21 billion. Your chance of getting 5 right, without the bonus ball is 1 in 450 million.

Now just you listen, goddamn it.

I have no god. No religion. No spirituality to speak of. Humankind upsets me on a daily basis. My life isn’t all too bright.

Don’t take away the only hope I have with your facts and logic. Shoo!

I do not buy lottery tickets because the odds are astronomically high that I will never win anything.
In fact, if I bought a lottery ticket every day for the rest of my life I still stand a much higher chance of never winning anything than winning once.
but I’m sixteen so it doesn’t matter

I bought one lottery ticket in my life. I had fantasies. I didn’t win. I realized I could have fantasies for free, if I wanted to. I realized that my chances of winning if I buy a ticket are so minimally larger than my chances of winning if I don’t buy a ticket, that I thought I’d rather save my money for retirement (which has a much better chance of “winning”), than buy lottery tickets. Every once in a while, someone on fluther asks what I’d do if I had unlimited money. I get to fantasize then, if I want to.

Lotteries are cynical taxes on the poor passed by weak-kneed politicians who can’t look a voter in the eye and tell them we need to spend more on education, bridges and homeless shelters. Somehow, the anti-tax politicians keep getting elected, even though it is the stupidest way of running the public sector.

Well, if idiots want to vote in regressive tax systems, I’m not going to volunteer to pay more taxes, even though I’m paying less than my fair share. So far, we still have our jobs, and even if we didn’t, we’d have several years we could live on savings before things got tight. I don’t like seeing people take actions that keep them from getting out of poverty, but I do as much as I can to urge people to vote for better policy. I can’t force them to save themselves money.

I didn’t for years, but about 15 years ago a very rich guy I new told me that for $52 a year you might win $3million or more, why not play? And, the money helps the school system. When I worked at Bloomingdale’s one of our clients was a lottery winner. And, when I was in high school my boyfriend won $1600 in the state lotto, I think he had 5 out of 6 numbers. My husband really likes to play, so that gets me to play more often then I probably would if I were single, I probably buy 40 tickets a year (now you can win twice a week, so I still play very inconsistently).

The only time I buy them is when the jackpot is over $300 million. Since that isn’t very often, I use the money for something much more important, like a soda or a down payment on a pack of smokes. =)

Hubby buys them regularly, and he says we are just about break even on the winnings, nothing big though.

When the California lottery began, I spent $6/week on lotto with four of those dollars going into a pool with friends. That went on for a few years. Now, we don’t play lotto but will occasionally pick up some scratchers (we are about even having had some luck now and then….I prefer instant gratification…..and, I guess, instant disappointment as well).
See ya…..Gary/wtf

I don’t buy the tickets. But I do like trips to the casino or sticking 10 bucks in the video poker machine at the bar. I’m super cheap and will cash out a video poker once I make about 25%.

10 in and 12.50 out and I am happy. I would never spend money that I am not completely comfortable losing. At least it is a way to have some fun and kill time. I probably spend $30 per gambling unless I go to Vegas.

i will rarely. maybe a few times a year. if the job is having a pool like if there’s a big jackpot i will go in on it, but that’s rarely.

i used to go out with a guy who played the numbers. he would play mostly 3 digits but sometimes 4 digits, which of course pays better. so one Friday we’re at the mall and he sees another license plate with the last four digits of my plate. he says “we have to play that number.” we went to dinner, and he goes “we have to play that number. I have a feeling about that number.” I say “the world is full of people who have a feeling about a number.” we forget and the number comes out. we would have won about $5500. Monday at work this coworker says to me “i looked for your car in the parking lot and i saw you parked across the street. there was another car that had the same last numbers as your plate. I was going to play it but i didn’t and it came out. I would have won.” Imagine if both we and she played it and won? that would have been a weird coincidence.

One of the senior executives at a company I worked for once said to me, “I don’t get it, why do some people only play the lottery when it is $75million or some other crazy high number? Isn’t winning $6million really great also?” I think he’s right.

@Ica, statisticians call what happened to you a Stochastic Process. A stochastic process has been likened to determining what the chances are of a Prussian General being killed by being kicked in the head by his own horse.

In other words, these things happen, but they cannot be predicted.

@JLeslie 6 million isn’t enough for what I want to do. My dreams will take at least 50 million to realize, because if you are going to dream, dream BIG!

I don’t buy them cause I’m good at math.

@filmfann the old saying goes, “the lottery is for people bad at math” or my favorite “the lottery is a retirement plan for people who are bad at math.”

Lottery = Tax on people who can’t do math.

@jca I remember once, when I was in high school, watching my dad pick numbers for lotto. I said, “You should play my birthday!” He, of course, chose something else. There were three numbers to pick, and my birthday is Oct. 7. Yes, that’s tomorrow, yay me! If he had picked 107, he would have won. I don’t think it was a huge amount, but I never let him live it down.

For a while, my dad had a “system” at picking lotto numbers. He even had a computer program he’d purchased for that purpose. It never worked, and I don’t think he plays lotto anymore.

I don’t buy them. The money doesn’t go to where it’s supposed to go, which in NY State is supposed to be education. If it did, then teachers wouldn’t have to buy pencils, paper and other supplies from their own pockets. Where is that lotto money going? >:(

Confession: Someone got me scratch-off tickets for a birthday several years back and I won $100.

I don’t buy them because I never remember to check the winning numbers and it’s a pain to keep track of the slips. However, my dad buys them because he says he can afford it, and if it ever does pay off, it will be the best return on investment he could get.

However, we do have a distant family member that won the lottery, so it can happen. I also had a co-worker whose cousin won the lottery. However, based on how it affected our family member’s life and based on how strongly my co-worker felt that his cousin needed to share with him, I think I would rather not win. Or if I did, I wouldn’t tell anyone.

My grandfather was a gambling addict. Lost his flower business when he was in too deep. Almost lost his life too from what I hear. This was before me but I got to witness the fallout as he wrung his hands over pennie-ante poker on Saturday nights or paced the ground at Wonderland when the puppies would run. What made me the saddest was how he pleaded with the scratch tickets, the quarter in his hand a blur of desperation.

The few times I stop at the corner store, I see those same hollow eyes in the folks milling about the “Keno lounge” and I take my milk or bread or whatever, and I run like hell.

No I don’t. And I despise the people who take 45 minutes picking them out while a long line of customers wait impatiently behind them.

I always seem to get behind some old fart with his ‘desperation tickets’ in hand when I am running late. I hate that.

no, it’s pointless. Lotteries are designed to pay you just enough money so that you think you’re going to hit it big soon. Statistically there is absolutely no reason to ever buy a lottery ticket.

As clever a witticism as it is to call lottery a tax on the stupid/innumerate/people who can’t do math, I, a degreed Accountant who could outdo 99 out of 100 of you in a head head math competition, do on occasion

1) Buy a Powerball ticket
2) buy a scratch off lottery ticket
3) play slot machines.

None of these things is a wise investment. But I KNOW that. It’s not about the fact that it’s more likely you will win than lose, it’s about other things.

For Powerball, jackpots start at $10 million, and have gotten as high as I think around $300 million (the pot goes up every week that someone doesn’t win). The odds are pretty horrible….the chances of getting all six numbers are close to one in two hundred million. Indeed, the EASIEST way to win ANYTHING, is to match the powerball alone, winning you $3 on a $1 bet, the odds of which are 1 in 61, and your overall odds of winning ANY prize are like 1 in 35. Not exactly a good investment. And as such, of all the forms of gambling, this is the one I play the least often. I play Powerball when the prize is very big (I don’t have a floor, some times it’s been $200 million before I played, some times $50 million, but I usually don’t buy a ticket if someone’s just won the prize).

Now one can point out who stupid and illogical that is and I fully agree. Consider that your odds of winning are no greater when the prize is $10 million than they are if the prize is $250 million, so why would you spend more for the same odds? Second problem is, realistically if I won $5 million, I highly doubt I’ll live more than 50 more years, if I divide 5 million by 50, that’s $100,000 per year, and that’s more than my wife have ever brought in put together….I imagine on a $100k per year income, I could live out the rest of my life pretty well without having to work again, which when you get right down to it is the purpose of playing the lottery…so that if you win, you don’t ever have to work again, at least for me it is.

So, why do I play, and why only when the jackpot is large? Well, it’s a fantasy. And I get the idea that I can fantasize without spending money. But to me there’s a real qualitative difference between fantasizing about winning 200 million dollars if there is an actual chance (though infinitesimally small it may be) and fantasizing about winning $200 million when I’m not entered into any contest where that would even be possible. For the fantasy to have any thrill to it in my book, it has to be within the realm of possibility, not probability. OK, yeah, my one ticket has a one in 200 million chance of winning that 200 million dollars, as does everyone else’s ticket, and when the jackpot gets that high, enough people are playing that someone is likely going to win. It won’t happen, I KNOW it won’t happen, but my ticket has just as much chance as anyone else’s, someone’s gotta win it, and it COULD be me.

Now, I don’t expect to win, and in fact, I don’t watch the drawing, I don’t call for the results the next day, in fact some times it’s months before I check my ticket. Yes, the next time I’m at the gas station I’ll see if the jackpot went up (meaning no one won, not even me) or down (meaning someone won, maybe me but probably not), and if I notice that there was a winner, I may then be more motivated to check my ticket, but sometimes I even forget until I see on the news some couple from Bungfuck, West Virginia claiming their prize. Then what often happens is I’ll have 2 or three tickets in my wallet from say a 2 month period, probably about how often I play on average, an I’ll call the phone number. I’ll say in my lifetime, I’ve spent maybe a grand total of $200 on Powerball tickets, and I believe I’ve won $3 twice and $4 once. But every time I’ve been able to think about what if.

I get to dream, to say, OK, this is the first thing I would do, this is the second, this is how I’d set it up, this is how I’d quit my job (if I happen to have one), this is how I’d tell my wife an family, this is what I’d do to my house, this is what I’d buy, this is where I’d travel, this is how I would invest….I enjoy thinking about these little details…living in my own little fantasy world that I’ve made plausible with a meager $1 investment. I’ve gotten more than my $190 net investment over the past couple decades since I started buying the very occasional ticket.

Now, for scratch offs, your typical scratch off has odds of around 1 in 3 to 1 in 5 of winning a prize, and there are a lot of prizes that match the denomination of the ticket, and a lot that are greater. Now, I honestly couldn’t say in net if I’d won or lost money on playing these, but understanding odds, it’s very unlikely that I’ve won in net. Some times I’ve spent as much as $20 at one time on scratch off tickets and won nothing, and some times I’ve spent a buck and won $50. For my dad’s 65th birthday, as he REALLY likes gambling, I bought him $65 worth of lottery tickets, he won $145 including a $100 ticket that I paid $3 for. The point is you will far more often win SOMETHING on a scratch off than you will on Powerball, and the way I see it is, even if in net I’ve spent more on scratch offs than I’ve won, I’ve never spent more than $20 (for myself) in one shot and never more than I could afford, and let’s say some times I threw away a dollar I never missed, at other times, I spent a dollar and won $30, and that extra $30 actually WAS meaningful. Now I know enough about odds to realize that it’s a losing proposition in the long run, but it’s again a thrill, a thrill that you might win, and a thrill if you actually DO win, but not much of a letdown if you don’t, as long as you’re not spending money you’ll miss.

But unlike Powerball, I find scratch offs fun to play. I will usually buy scratch offs that have interesting games. To me, spending a buck or two, or occasionally $10 or $20 when I can afford to is worth the enjoyment I get by playing the game on the ticket, when combined with the thrill of maybe winning and the occasional thrill of actually winning. Now again, this is not a regular occurrence for me, I might spend marginally more money on scratch offs than I do on Powerball, I’d estimate I’ve spent $500 over the last 20 years on scratch offs, I’m sure I’ve won back at least ½ of that, and yes, I’ve gotten $250 worth of entertainment out of it.

Casinos are the same thing, and I like to play slots, which anyone who knows anything about odds will tell you is a fool’s game. Basically how slots work is they are set to pay back a percentage of what they take in, a smaller percentage than what they take in. And what happens is they pretty much suck money until they’re full and ready to pay, then they pay until they’re back at that average. The majority of machines you get on are going to be losers. As for winning and losing, I’ll play only what I can afford to lose. Usually I’ll have a bankroll of about $50, I maybe go 3 times a year, that’s on average over the last 20 years, so that’s what, 3 grand? But it’s to as if I’ve lost my entire $50 every time I’ve gone. Some times I have, some times I’ve lost $20 or $5, some times I’ve won $20, or $50, sometimes more…once I walked away with $350. I’d say it’s unlikely I’ve lost more money on casinos than I’ve lost on scratch offs. Now I also spend 4 or 5 hours playing slots when I go, let’s say I lose on average $10 in a 5 hour period, well I’ve just been entertained for 2 bucks an hour.

And there is a thrill, I could win, I have won, and I could win big even though I haven’t, I can daydream about winning big…I know it won’t happen, but I know it has happened to people on occasion, and it theoretically could happen, which just like Powerball, makes it plausible to daydream about. But I just like seeing the occasional jackpot or bonus game, I like the anticipation of what’s going to happen on this play. I will basically play penny slots where you play a multiple number of lines, one coin per line, some times as few as 12 lines, some times as many as 40, so 12 to 40 cents per game…and yeah, it adds up if you sit there and just keep plunking money in. But what I do is I’ll set a goal for a machine, like I won’t lose more than $x playing it. Then if I win, I’ll cash out if I get down to $y or if I get higher than $z, and I stick to it. So the only time I lose that $50 is if I say to myself $5 is the most I’m willing to lose on a machine, and I lose that $5 right away on 10 machines in a row, then I’m done, no taking out more cash, no going back on it.

The point is, I limit what I’m willing to lose, I make sure I never lose more than I can afford, and I never spend more than the entertainment or fantasy I get by playing the game is worth to me. That way, even if (when) I lose, I’m not upset or angry about it. And I don’t play 10 tickets a week, I don’t have a set of numbers, I don’t have a ‘system’, I don’t reinvest every single dollar I win, and I try not to make stupid mistakes. Some people think it’s bound to hit, and they get in over their heads, they figure they’re in so far their only choice is to go in deeper and hope for a big hit to make it all up. It only takes one big win after all. If you gamble, do it because you want to, and don’t expect to win, it makes the thrill of actually winning all that greater. If it’s not for you, it’s not for you. But not everyone who gambles is stupid. Just the people who hold up the line by turning in their $6 in winners with another $20 out of their wallets so they can play all their numbers that week because they “have a system” and “it’s only a matter of time”.

I used to buy them every now and then. The lottery helped fund a lot of important programs like Head Start and college scholarships. It was a novelty, kind of exciting and fun, and I figured the worst thing that happened was I spent $1 to donate 12 cents to kids who need it. I can live with that.

When the National lottery was at 25million (in Euro’s! not crappy dollars :P) I was very tempted. I’m glad I didn’t because 8m people (out of a population of 16m) had the same idea.

My parent’s pay 5 Euro’s a month for over 20 years now, and have once won 5 Euro’s. However they are afraid to quite now, because what if next time..
I know what you are thinking but this really happened to a friend of a friend.

@aprilsimnel I have wondered the same thing about the lottery here in CT. Plus, we have two big casinos that pay huge amounts of money to the state each year. You’d think with all that extra revenue, our taxes wouldn’t be so high, or at least all of the schools would top-notch. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of where all that money actually goes.

No I don’t, mainly because it never crosses my mind to do so. At the moment I would rather not waste my money on something I am not liely to win on anyway.

@markyy I don’t understand your statement I was very tempted. I’m glad I didn’t because 8m people (out of a population of 16m) had the same idea. Why does it matter how many people played?

If people knew more about math, most of them would not play. There are only two good strategies (for example when picking 6 out of 49 numbers):

Second best strategy: Avoid popular combinations, for example related to numbers in birthdays. This doesn’t increase your overall chances, but if you pick the right numbers there will be fewer competitors.

Best strategy: Don’t play and make a safe investment offered by your bank. Let’s say it’s $10 per week. Suppose you get 5% interest long term. After 30 years of ‘not playing’ you win your own personal ‘lottery’ big time.

There’s also an almost sure-fire strategy to win $100 at the roulette table? “All” you got to do is follow 3 simple steps:

1 – Bet on black.
2 – If you lose, then double your bet, else stop playing.
3 – Goto 1.

Well, of course there’s a catch.

DAMN YOU ALL.

RE: the tax for the ignorant/incapable of doing math—It’s not clever witticism; it’s a fact for the majority. Yes a lot people play the lottery out of fantastical belief that they will win. The fact is that you probably won’t. You don’t have to be a degreed “Accountant” to do accurate math, as seen here.

Why give the government any more of your hard-earned money? If for fantastical reasons, then I too can fantasize about unicorns and “Jesus”! but i’ll be putting my powerpall money in a savings account instead.

@perplexed82 – and were I not the only intelligent person with very strong math skills who understands the odds, I might agree with you, and perhaps it is a majority of people who gamble don’t understand it, but in my experience, I know all manner of people who understand these things but who still spend money on gambling, knowing full well that it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey…they enjoy doing it, it’s entertainment. I could take my entire entertainment budget and save it, and then I’d have a bunch of money to spend on my personal enjoyment when I got too old to enjoy using the money. I’d rather spend a bit here and there on things I enjoy, I don’t think people who write gambling off as being a tax on the ignorant are seeing all sides of it.

@dalepetrie I’m not stating facts, just opinions. Everything is taken a little too serious on this “forum” lol.

i won a lottery of sorts. Well, at times it felt like I won. I even felt somewhat guilty about the winnings when I thought of people like me who were not as “lucky” as I was. But this lottery had a timer on it, which was undetermined when I “won” but is now running down quickly out of control.
When I went to work for one of the worlds largest corporations 30 years ago at a very nice salary and good benefits (inc. a nice match on IRA contributions with a wide selection of investment options including a little bonus of their stock), they offered a bunch of insurance options, including several Life Insurance options, Special Accident Insurance and Long Term Disability Insurance.
The deal with the last one was this. Pay a premium of $20 per week and should you become disabled and not able to work and never be able to return to work, they guaranteed me 60% of my salary at the time of disability. The guarantee meant that after Social Security benefits, they would make up the difference to get me to the 60%. I don’t recall my reasoning or thought process at the time, and I don’t think I had a premonition, but I took the gamble. I could afford it since my starting salary was more than I had ever earned before, so it wasn’t anything I would feel.
For 20 years I faithfully paid the $20/week (actually payroll deduction) for a total investment of over $20,000. But prior to the 20 years, one of my feet started to drag a bit. Then there was knee pain, the other foot started to quit, then I lost strength in one leg then the other then one arm. The doctors were pretty perplexed at first, but the progression indicated a neuromuscular disease of unknown origin but not a real pretty prognosis. My grandmother survived a neuromuscular disease for eight years until it resulted in her death at the age of 63. I was 46 years old and in great health and in good shape at onset. The head of the MDA/ALS clinic had a hunch and had me take the then new familial (genetic) DNA test and it came back positive. My particular mutation was a new one to the researchers, simultaneously discovered in me and a woman in Spain. My grandmother was Spanish and I was, in an instant, an ALS patient (one of Jerry’s “kids”) and much in demand to ALS researchers, geneticists and genealogists around the world. I was regularly conversing with doctors from Spain Sweden, England, Canada and here in the states, Harvard, Northwestern, John Hopkins, UCLA and USC. I fed them blood, test results showing the level and rate of degeneration, EMGs, MRIs, muscle biopsies, spinal taps and my family tree. My neurologist ended my employment and eventually my “celebrity” status died down as the researchers moved on to new patients and new mutations.
I progressed up the ladder in that corporation and was one step away from the “big time” (big annual bonus that would more than double my salary) when I terminated employment, but at the time had a salary of close to $100K excluding benefits. The day I left, my boss ordered that I be paid my full salary and all benefits for a full year, which was one hell of a parting gift (I was worth it….I had saved the Corporation millions during my employment).
After that year LTD Insurance kicked in. Between Social Security and the insurance carrier I have had an income of $60K a year for almost nine years. The kicker is all that income became tax-exempt after the first two or three years which effectively makes my income much higher. Last I looked at it, my $20K “investment” has met with a return of over $350,000, (excluding Social Security) . However, I am now effectively paralyzed and my breath is labored and there is no hope. I’ll see this Christmas…bets are off for next. I’ll let you decide if I “won”.
See ya….Gary/wtf

Gary, I’ve sat here for a while, thinking about what to say. I’m always at a loss for words whenever you go into details with regards to your illness. I really don’t know what else to say, other than I love you, man.

@whatthefluther: I’m thinking we close up this thread, grab @Grisaille, and have a beer or three; ‘cuz really…who knows what tomorrow will bring.

@cprevite….Cool….as long as you let me buy. Give me a couple of days….I’m finishing up a little something for a friend that I want to get in the mail. If you guys don’t mind, I’m picking up @daloon on the way….I owe him a few beers. Hope you guys are cool with the imported stuff….real fine imports from Belgium, Denmark, etc….you only live once!
@Grisaille….Back at you LZ!
See ya….Gary/wtf

I never buy them but have bought a few strips as gifts for others in the past. Now, since my few friends are all poor, I’m more inclined to just give them the money. We call the lottery R.S.A. (Redneck Savings Account) in my circles.

No, I have never bought a lottery ticket. i have thought about it but never gotten around to it. I do not have anything against it but I will follow this question until i buy one. i’ll let you know how it goes. peace

So last night i bought a lottery ticket. it was called Black Jack… I didn’t win anything but it was pretty exciting. I had to persuade the gas attendant to sell me one because apparently you have to be 21 to buy one. I’m 19. Well, i bought the cheapest one over the counter, which was a dollar, and was pretty excited to start scratching away. I think i might start buying one regularly. I just hope that i can find nice gas attendants to sell me one.

@ruk_d You do realize that if you were to ‘win’ you would be disqualified because of your age, don’t you?

yea, the dude told me to get someone of age to claim the prize if i won. i didn’t think i would anything.

I occasionally buy one, maybe a couple of times a year or if the jackpot is huge.

I don’t realistically expect to win, but I find it worth $1 to have enough of a chance to at least dream of a better life as opposed to fantasizing for free but knowing that I have no chance of a sudden windfall.

The only gambling I do is in the stock and futures markets. Ay least there a bit of knowledge gives you some advantage.

The lottery is for dreamers who don’t understand probabilities.

@ItsAHabit For some people, dreams are all they have left.

I’m too young. I have to wait 8 years.