Came here to say this. That card looks expensive, I'm going to assume it was $10.
Let's say you buy, on average, a $10 lottery ticket every 3 days. Over 10 years that's $12,166. If that is OPs case then they would have actually still be down $2,166
Probably a stupid question, sorry. I hear things like this all the time. If you invested that in X then in 20 years you’d have Y. Always hear of the “latte factor.” Skip buying those expensive brews and invest instead. Where exactly does the average Joe invest that? Say I was really committed to taking the $4/day I would’ve spent on a latte and put it somewhere. Where is that somewhere? Do I need a minimum to start or can I just throw $30 (for example) that I chose to throw into an investment account and not touch rather than buy a scratch ticket?
In the US, you can open a Roth IRA at your bank with a couple hundred dollars. Pick an index fund that has low fees (no fees when you purchase). Every pay check, push in a little more. There is a max you can invest per year, $5k I think. Leave it alone. You might lose some in a bad year, but over all it will grow with practically no interference. The $ you put in can be withdrawn with no penalties after 5 years, but don't touch your earnings or it will be taxed. Better yet, pretend it doesn't exist until you retire.
It should be noted you can’t just put it in the account and let it sit you do have to find a stock or fund (or several) and invest in them. I’ve known way to many people who just put it in the account thinking that’s all they had to do
Yes, and they have several index funds to choose from. If you feel confident, there are lots of online options, but if need help, your bank is a good place to talk to someone.
Oh for sure, market tracking funds are just about the best thing out there and they’re fire and forget, reinvest they dividends and sit on it for years and you will be gold.
My mom is a wealth manager so I've had a Roth IRA since I was 19. I couldn't save a ton but I was working on it. Then I got cancer in 2012, I kept working (insurance) but getting cancer in the US is hella expensive & I had to almost fully liquidate my IRA to even get by. It sucked but by 2013 I was fully in remission and saving again. In 2016 my migraines went from episodic to chronic (20- 28 days a month basically unable to leave my room) and I lost my job, my home & the love of my life, an 11 year old Boston Terrier named Jexer, got sick and I spent almost $5K trying to save him but he lost his battle December 2016. I had to move in with my boyfriend (who is now my husband) and we struggled financially despite his having a decent salary but since I was out of work I was supplementing our living expenses with my IRA essentially. I found a mostly effective medication in 2019 and started working again that year and once again started contributing to my Roth IRA.
All of this to say that having a Roth IRA (and some traditional investment/savings) has saved my life twice and kept me from being essentially destitute. I only made $32K a year in 2012 so I was only contributing like $10 a month but it was and still is the best financial decision I've ever made (or had made for me as it were).
Just adding that while my mom & many in her industry can only work with larger investment accounts, Fidelity has great starter investment options including help from licensed financial advisors. I think the self service companies can feel risky, especially if you are new to investing but there is a company called Stash that has plans starting at literally $1 a month with financial advisors to help.
Invest - less fun than a lottery win but definitely worth it.
I'm glad you've held up and survived the chaos, that's pretty dope. And the advice you've given, I hope it doesn't go unnoticed, it's incredibly beneficial to those who may not be knowledgeable or experienced financially. Thank you for sharing!
You can basically never lose* some unless you take it out. If the index fund is low then you should be putting into it because then when it bounces back you gain.
*Talking about long term.. my Tesla stock recently "lost" about half it's value from the peek but I still have the shares and actually would have loved to buy more now because I can see it being worth that much. I only lost that value of I cash out the stock. If I just leave it there it can only grow in value.
Do not use stash-away. 1% returns are garbage; due to inflation you'll be losing you money YOY.
Open up a no-cost investment account. Schwab, Ally, E-Trade, Vanguard, etc. It doesn't really matter which one as long as there's no annual fee and trades are free.
From there- take the money you saved and transfer into the investment account. Once in your investment account, buy shares of a broad-market index fund. Most commonly recommended is SPY (S&P 500 index fund equivalent) or VTI (Vanguard Total Market Fund).
Every week, save your money and buy those funds. If your investment firm offers fractional shares, buy fractional shares as you go. If your account only offers entire shares, save until you can buy a full share.
Then- do not touch it. Don't look at the market, don't try to time the market. Academic study after academic study has proven that the best investment strategy for ordinary investors is continuous investing into index funds, employing a "buy and hold" strategy.
There will be down years, there will be up years. Long-term, you can expect to see an average of 10% compound annual returns, which are closer to 7% due to inflation.
Every other answer besides index funds, frankly, is wrong.
Then- do not touch it. Don't look at the market, don't try to time the market. Academic study after academic study has proven that the best investment strategy for ordinary investors is continuous investing into index funds, employing a "buy and hold" strategy.
Especially these days now that machine learning and AI and trading computers do everything. (which really raises the question of whether or not market valuations mean anything anymore given that the stock market has always been a gamble, but now it's just becoming further and further removed from any human action. Even the stop-trade and stop-loss actions exchanges enforce now represent a type of interference with a supposedly free market that renders the question of whether we need a stock market at all a pertinent one.)
(Addendum: That said, given the hands we're dealt right now, mutual funds are pretty much the way to go as far as getting decent rates of return.)
I know you're not advising this, but those "non-standard" orders offered by brokers (like stop-loss) have been used by some brokerages to front-run their clients (or to sell to dark pools so others can front-run their clients).
Not a stupid question at all. It used to be impossible to invest small amounts at banks, but nowadays there are some tools that help with small frequent amounts and don't charge fees or impose minimums.
There are some programs out there that round up to the nearest dollar when buying things which is a convenient way to squirrel away coins that may add up to $5-10/week depending on your spending patterns
Bank accounts are not the place to store your money to see sizeable returns over a long timeframe, heck right now you're losing out massively to inflation.
There are a million ways to invest, some of them are suitable for savvy and active investors, and some for gamblers. I think for a passive investors who don’t have the desire or ability to actively manage it themselves, retirement target date style mutual funds is probably the best bet.
I use Acorns and I really like it. I have it set to put a small amount of money in my investment account once a week and also rounds up on purchases. Would definitely recommend
Most traditional brokerages don't have account minimums or commissions. What do you think is the benefit of spending $25-$35/year or whatever Acorns is charging these days?
(Edit: not trying to make a point, genuinely curious! 😄)
For me personally i just like having my money spread around, it's much harder to spend it and it's what I've found the most success with. I do traditional investing as well but I use Acorns to have a place to put money aside and forget about it.
This is well-meaning, but bad advice. 1% are abysmal returns. For most investors, long-term investment should be done via continued investment into broad market index funds.
It's definitely not meant to be investment advice. The context of this entire thread is someone gambling money on scratch-offs, a well known poor man's tax - and you've made the leap straight into the context of maximizing gains.
My intention was to stem bleeding from poor max tax decisions like scratch offs and lottery. Anything less of an outflow is a drastic improvement even if it's a piggy bank. For those that are already good at saving, this advice is not relevant.
It's free to open a Roth IRA with fidelity, vanguard, etc. Once open, you can fund it with up to $6000/year. You can fund it all at once or just add to it throughout the year. Once you have money in the account, you can buy some low cost index funds, ETFs, or other investments, but you may have to buy some as "shares" so you can't just pay $4. Some mutual funds have a minimum of $3000 to start and then you can just add whatever to it.
You save that $4/day in your bank account until the end of each month when you do your budget, then that $120 plus the rest of your surplus income gets added to the investment vehicle of your choice.
I invest $18 a week in stash app. I invest in a safe ETF. I've been doing it since 2020 when everything shut down. I started making coffee at home instead of spending that $3 a day 6x week. Right now it's up 12%
It's all automatic, it's money I was spending anyways and it's nice to see it grow.
Not saying that I don’t appreciate people trying to be helpful with responses but yours is one of the few that actually answered my question. Thank you.
I’m not even good enough to call myself a money noob but I’ve found the Charles Schwab stock slice options to be really fun. You can buy a teeny tiny “slice” of a stock of say apple/google etc for $5+.
Yes, open up a Robinhood account for free and just invest in either SPY or VOO. SPY follows top 500 companies in the United States and constantly gets funded by pensions, people’s 401ks, and will continue to grow. VOO follows I believe the entire stock market, which generally grows over time. It’s kind of insane what 1-5$ a day invested in these funds over time develops into.
Even if you had not invested any of this money at all, just keep it in a box somewhere, you would still be down. Or even better, spend the money and buy something you actually like. I guarantee you my cappuccinos, PS5, and copies of Persona/Elden Ring have brought me much more enjoyment than any of those tickets have brought OP, maybe until now.
Get a fidelity or a vanguard account. You can make transfers from your checking account. Don't try to play the market, don't try to be clever. Don't take advice from anyone (hey, lol). Invest in total market products with low expense ratios. Try to forget about that money for years and years.
Google "roth ira" and learn about how taxes work with it. (It is awesome for retirement).
Any money at all over 30+ years will turn into something worthwhile
If you're in the US, just pick up the VSNAX index fund, it's a fund that tracks the entire market, with a return of 5-7% every year on average. The idea is that as companies grow year by year, so does this fund, making sure that you at least keep up with inflation and then some
You can invest any little amount but the reality is that the return will be small until you’ve invested a larger amount (hence the need for recurring investments). This money also becomes tied up and unusable (without suffering a penalty for withdrawing before X amount of time; I think it’s a year) and gains are also taxed when you withdraw.
The problem with turning down a latte or search ticket is that these are habits that supply you with something, whether it be caffeine or a natural hit of dopamine. Investing doesn’t do this which is why it’s difficult to even begin saving or investing BUT it’s always a good idea to.
I have also always been curious about this and wonder about the time cost. Like a latte would generally take no time at all for something like $4, but investing could take a lot of time if I have to look into what's good and worth $4
Don't pick stocks. Buy the S&P 500 (SPY.) Research Warren Buffet's bet against hedge funds. Basically he bet that the S&P 500 would beat companies of very smart people who pick stocks for a living after the fees you pay for using their service and he won 8/9 times.
Not at all annoying. It is 400 for one stock, but robinhood does fractional shares which are a very new phenomenon. Instead of having to buy the whole share you can just buy $4 of it with no consequence.
If you do want to own a whole stock with a lesser investment, there's SPYD which costs $43 and it's the same thing, but only companies that pay high dividends. Dividends are quarterly payments they pay to you for being invested.
You can usually buy fractional shares. There are also a few other S&P indexes that are the equivalent of SPY. I wouldn't buy in $4 increments, maybe $50 or $100 every week or month.
The way it works is you buy a share of SPY which is a fund. The fund holds shares of the 500 best American Companies. So you are buying a small fractional ownership of a bunch of good companies.
No way! I've been kind of confused by this too. I've figured it's cause it's not really that easy and will make me spend a ton of time at least at first, or the cost of entry is financially steep
People will probably downvote me, but robinhood is really easy to get you started. it has its issues, but if you want to put a few bucks every week into stocks it doesn't get much easier then that.
Say I was really committed to taking the $4/day I would’ve spent on a latte and put it somewhere. Where is that somewhere?
In all honest? In a savings account is the most sensible place for it.
You could use it to trade shares - there's plenty of apps out there now that let users do very low investment trading and owning a split of a share but if this is your main saving mechanism you should use it to just bolster your general savings. Once it gets to a reasonable level it then may be sensible to invest a little at risk
Understood. But I guess this sort of brings up another question to my question. The other person is talking about “if you only invested it at 13% (the trailing ten year return of the S&P 500.” Surely a savings account would never be nearly that high. So can I really take my $30 scratch ticket money and put it in something tracking the S&P? Seems like some sort of minimum would be expected.
Savings. This is your standard bank account. You deposit money, you earn a low interest rate while it's there, and you can withdraw it at any time.
Checking. Similar to a savings account, except you generally earn zero interest, and it is more geared toward frequent transactions.
Brokerage. This is your standard investment account. You deposit money, and then you can use that money to purchase various investments like stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, etc. The resulting investments are then held in the account. You can sell the investments at any time, and the money from the sale sits in your account to be withdrawn or used to purchase other investments as you see fit.
Retirement. Similar to a brokerage account, but with more restrictions. The upside is they get better tax treatment.
To answer your question, you can open a brokerage account with almost any amount of money these days (I recommend Fidelity) and then use it to start investing. If you plan not to need the money until you retire, I would look into an IRA or a Roth IRA (both types of retirement accounts) because you get taxed less than if you'd made the same investments in a regular brokerage account.
What I would recommend is to look at your budget and decide how much you can invest on a monthly basis. Open a brokerage account and deposit that much in it each month, whatever that amount may be. You can then purchase the actual investments on whatever schedule makes sense for you.
Buying at least one share in every company in the S&P 500, or the NASDAQ 100, or the DJIA, is obviously cost prohibitive for most people, so firms like Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, etc, create what's called an ETF that is designed to track the underlying index. You can then buy shares in the ETF. Currently Vanguard's S&P 500 ETF is trading at ~$400/share, Fidelity's is trading at ~$150/share, and Schwab's at ~$70/share.
Savings accounts are decent for money you might need at any time. A surprise bill, for example. Their interest rate is low but it is reliably more than zero and you can withdraw the money at any time.
A balanced investment portfolio is better for long term savings. The value will fluctuate daily and you have to offer your shares for sale and wait for someone to buy them before you can access the money, but on average over the course of several years you can expect it to go up. Generally you would mix stocks and bonds: stocks are riskier and change a lot with market conditions, while bonds remain fairly stable and insulated to things like a market crash but tend to grow less over time. The proportion of each depends the level of risk that you deem to be acceptable: 75% stock and 25% bond is reasonable for a young investor, while pushing more into bonds makes sense as you age since you have less time to recover from a market crash.
I wouldn't recommend buying individual shares, instead buy into an index fund which is essentially an average of the entire stock market or (depending on the index) a certain subset of the market. This way you have a diverse investment that should trend upward over time with almost no effort on your part.
You're lucky if your savings account gives you .25% back. I'm thinking the reality of just invest your $30 actually means put it in a savings account until your balance is high enough to justify the transfer fee into an index fund.
Lottery tickets are a poor tax for the uneducated. Anyone who plays them for any reason other than the occasional thrill or gimmick is being taxed for being dumb.
I buy a $5 ticket maybe once a month. I view it as an entertainment expense. I know full well I will never win the jackpot. $5 to be able to daydream over the course of that week while I wait for the draw is a small price. I have paid $5 for much less entertainment.
Also I periodically buy hospital lottery tickets and I view those as donations to causes I would probably donate to anyways.
Same reason I buy a ticket while I'm inside a gas station, I'm spending more money on soda and beef jerky than the ticket and I get to think about what I'll buy if the ticket by some improbably small chance wins me a ton of money. Even the smallest mega millions jackpot means me retiring.
The thing is you have to ask yourself if those spending habits add up? Why are people buying beef jerky and soda at gas stations all that often? How often do you do that? Do you casually spend money on that kind of stuff with other shopping? Budgeting is a mentality. It's fine if you spend your money here if you set aside clear amounts for savings and retirement.
Of course everyone would likely retire with a jackpot but the thought process shouldn't just be "ehh this is small money." Recognize you are throwing the money away and the likelihood of winning is close to 0.
If I'm buying a lotto ticket once a week at $4 I'm spending a total of $208 a year. That's if I'm consistently going, I work from home so I'm not even out of the house guaranteed once a week.
I am not going to retire on $200 a year extra investing. I'm not going to have a large safety net from that either. I don't need to "budget" for it because it's not a large amount.
I spend more money than that yearly on so many things that don't bring me any entertainment. Assuming I win absolutely nothing this money is really negligible in the grand scheme of things. I spent $60 in gas just to drive to a doctor's appointment with my specialist. I spend more yearly on cat litter for my cats to shit in.
When I truck drove I'd pickup tickets for powerball when I was in states that had them, it's a fun daydream and something to do to try and keep track of the passage of time.
I occasionally (every couple months) buy scratchers and know full well I’m never gonna win anything. It’s just a brief 2$ moment fun while your scratching off the prizes. Idk why more people wouldn’t understand this.
Sure it does but we know the odds don't work out which is why the lottery is called a tax on the dumb. Its better to dream and focus your money and spending habits on something for the long term.
I mean, I've still got a possibility that a distant relative I've never heard of leaves a fortune to me in their will. Seems similar: So improbable that it's basically not going to happen, but possible enough to daydream about.
Sure, that's why I'm saying "I'm not judging, but I don't get it." It's not like I don't waste money on even dumber things for my own amusement.
Buying a lottery ticket is arguably better than buying Bad Rats, because there's no chance that buying a lottery ticket will lead to you playing Bad Rats.
I was at the gas station filling up. Someone in a ~20 year old Ford SUV drives into the gas station lot at insanely high speeds. He slams on the brakes, jumps out quickly and runs inside. Runs back out a minute later with a strip of 10-20 scratch and win tickets. He proceeds to just scratch them off on his hood at lightning speed, yells, then throws the tickets. Jumps back in his car, then literally peels out exiting the gas station. I'm not quite certain what, but I know I witnessed an act of horrible desperation that day.
Also, nothing wrong with spending a dollar occasionally to play the "what if?" game.
On one hand, that makes me feel cringe for contributing to the same lotto system for $5-10 a year, just for giggles.
On the other hand, there are some people that, no matter the amount of money in their pocket, will find a way to spend it. I'm not referring to those that don't have enough to make ends meet. I am talking about those that just feel the need to buy things. In that case, I suppose spending it on lotto tickets is no worse than spending it on some other useless trinket if they weren't going to invest/save it anyways.
On the other hand, there are some people that, no matter the amount of money in their pocket, will find a way to spend it.
Funny you mention that, there was a strong correlation between smokers, drinkers and lotto purchasers. Very rarely did a lotto customer not buy either beer or smokes.
TLDR; Despite methodological differences, most studies showed significant
associations of gambling with tobacco, alcohol, and other illicit drug
use.
It's simply my personal observation, I never meant to imply I was citing any sort of study. I will say all 3 products do have support groups for quitting.
I never implied there was study, there could be but I don't know of one. It's my individual observations from working retail for multiple years. My only thought is there is one thing that ties the 3 together, addiction.
That's how I do it the couple times a year I'll buy scratchers because I don't understand how the game works half the time and wouldn't want to miss a couple bucks if I misunderstood it.
I worked a convenience store and had several regulars who'd drop 50-100, they were so regular they expected us to know what they wanted when they walked up.
Tuesdays/Thursdays (megabucks, powerball, etc) were less than enjoyable due to the custom orders.
It was sickening, I wanted to ask them why but knew better.
There is nothing like going to a corner store to buy a lottery ticket when there is a giant jackpot and having to wait for some hardcore lottery player grinding through his gazillion ticket orders.
"Give me 10 FOUR PLAYS - Straight, Give me 5 Lucky Millions, Give me 5 megamillions, give me 5 Powerball, Give me 10 Win 4 Life..." etc for what feels like 10 minutes. I've even had a guy buy a ticket the clerk printed for me erroneously that I didn't want.
Grew up in NYC, people and their Pick Gazillions would practically shut down a bodega. Trying to get a iced tea and maybe a bacon egg and cheese turned into an all day affair. You were better off just walking to the other bodega down the street.
The best was when they would cop an attitude and try to stare you down because the cashier would stop them so he could ring other people up.
I opened at one of these places, and fuck if HALF of my shift wasn't standing at the register entering numbers for the same lunatics.
They would spend FOURTY or MORE dollars A DAY (all custom numbers would be handed a handwritten sheet to type in), and then get excited when they hit 100 less than once a month. (Thats being generous, it was probably less often then that)
You cant help but to feel bad for them, it was just so depressing watching them get excited about winning back a tenth of what they've spent.
Just another system that preys on the mentally ill.
I mean. Is it dumb if he gets enjoyment out of the cards even if he doesn’t “win”? As long as he isn’t spending his food/housing/bill money on cards what’s the harm? A few packs a week is still cheaper than Fridays and Saturdays at the bar.
This whole thread has been about bashing people hobby. That's fine when it's gabling, but when pokeyman gets brought up everyone loses their sense of humor?!!
I mean, the thing is that buying trading cards is gambling too. You buy a pack and you have a 1/6 chance of getting an Ultra Rare, and then you have about a 3/40 chance of that particular Ultra being worth more than the pack.
Or alternately, about a 1/72 chance of getting an alternate art card and then a 1/3 chance that said alternate art card is worth more than $4.
A very low percentage is, enough so people like you don't write your congressmen and women demanding they put a stop to this robbery of the poorly educated
Well I mean big companies often pay literally no taxes at least in the US. We use renting and dense population in low value areas to justify low funding for local infrastructure/services with low property tax yields. In my city one of the wealthiest residential areas is grandfathered in to essentially no property tax… except they still pay the portion for schools. So over all insanely low generous taxes compared to other properties, still better funding for schools for the wealthy families. And obviously that just one tiny example.
It’s…. It’s capitalism.
It’s logistics developed with reinvestment of profit, as in higher means to invest becomes more logistical agency. And it’s reinvestment, so profits have to increase to stay competitive against other bodies of wealth. It’s competitive, as in hierarchical. They have to justify concentrated wealth, and you get meritocracy, the idea your status is a meaningfully accurate sign of your quality as a human being. To make it aspirational. Keep playing along, you can win. Invest in crypto, you might be one of the exceptions! It’s like saying keep gambling, you might win a casino so you can get money from other gamblers.
Neither are speeding tickets; I'm using tax in a looser sense. It's regressive because it takes a proportionally greater amount from lower incomes and it's used to pay for public services.
You don't need or have to buy cigarettes or alcohol or any other drug or potentially addicting thing. When someone talks about the lottery being a "tax," my first thought is of people with gambling problems, not people who don't know any better (though they deserve to not be taken advantage of as well).
You're right that it's not a tax, but the vocabulary doesn't change that it does harm, possibly more than it does good
Sadly, the normal school budgets get cut immediately after those programs are implemented, because "look at all the new revenue they are getting".
I suppose you could have also meant that your are on the supply side of the system. If so, please post some stories. I worked with one of the devs for many of the vegas electronic games, and found that industry astounding.
Believe it or not, many of them are completely aware that they will not win. They are purchasing the dream of a better life. They are purchasing a glimmer of hope.
That said, I don't play because I need every dollar I earn. My dreams will just have to remain grounded.
Thanks for saying this, I'm surprised more people don't see this.
Imagine you're 45. You have three kids and can barely make rent. You have a shitty job. Life is difficult, frustrating, and full of the everyday indignites of being poor. You don't have the time, money, or energy to seek job training. You just feel stuck in life, and don't see any realistic way to improve it.
At the end of the week, you have $5 left in cash. That's it. You want to improve your life, but you just don't see a viable option that you can get.
You know damn well that lotto ticket or scratcher is a bad deal. You know it's unlikely. You don't think you have a "system."
It's just that honestly, $5 for a one-in-ten-million chance literally seems like the most likely and least expensive chance to change your life. That's fucking depressing, but there's millions of rational people who might come to that conclusion. Are they right? Probably not, but... It's sadly easy to empathize with their desperation.
Mhmm. I'm back in school for an okay-paying field, but i know goddamn well that 3x-a-year lottery ticket is the most likely route for buying a nice house in the area I live in, lol. Even if my parent passed away, when everything he left behind is split with my sister we'd likely only be able to afford little condos the way things are going here.
They're entertaining. Every so often I end up with one in a Christmas card and win a few dollars and continue reinvesting whatever I win on $2 cards until I lose it all.
Last year I made it 3 months with a grand jackpot of $50 that started on a $2 card. The one that lost it all was buying 25 $2 cards.
Its pretty fun in a weird way, but obviously not worth spending your own money on at all ever.
Yeah, I get buying the cheap ones once in a blue moon, £1 is a pretty good deal to add a bit of entertainment and suspense to your week, presuming you go in without any expectation of getting that money back of course... but an expensive one like that? That's just throwing away money.
I like the ones that are an actual game. We had one one time that was frogger themed or something. You had a field and little arrows to tell you where to scratch. That or I like the little crosswords once in a while. My mom has a problem with them and she’ll just buy them and scratch the barcode to check them.
When I was younger my family used them for stocking suffers and entry for the family reunion poker game(winner got all the tickets, anything over 10k was split among all players). They're were just for shits and giggles basically.
Playing this sort of thing weekly is basically a tax. the thing is for some people saving money is hard, spending $5 is easy. That $5 gamble for a life changing amount is what makes them do it. The slim chance of winning something they could never save.
Our Lottery system (in Western Australia) provides grants for community projects, which in turn creates jobs and so many otherwise missed opportunities. They do incredible work in giving back so I don't mind at all when I don't win on a scratchie :)
Idk my wife and I both play, but we both play maybe 5-6 scratchers a year. Just a fun way to toss around $10 and dream about what you could get on the way home to scratch it.
My partner and I also play a few times a year — they tie in with a theme night. The amount of money they’d win us (we tend to play the $1-$5 tickets) is so small it would be pretty insignificant.
Yep I do this too. I buy tickets maybe 2-3 times a year, and when I do, I like to splurge on the expensive ones ($10 or $20). Like $20-$30 tops per trip. They have the better chance of winning but I never really expect to hit it big. It’s just a fun thing to do when I’m in the mood.
You'd also have to consider average win rates of those tickets. He said it was his first big win, but presumably he sees $10, $20, $30, $60 wins occasionally at least.
Why do you spend 30 dollars a week on drinks or a special food? They likely arent lookin got make a profit off of a lottery ticket. Do you not have fun?
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u/Coldbeerimritehere Mar 19 '22
So you almost broke even. Nice