This is just for discussion. I am not preaching.
 

Last night I was watching a rerun of the TV show NUMBERS, and the statistic was quoted "You are ten times more likely to be hit by a car driving to buy a lottery ticket than you are to win the lottery". I typed it in google and came up with this from American Consumer News.

I keep thinking I am gonna buy a ticket and see lots of people in line at Publix...but old tight me will just keep my money.

From American Consumer News circa 2007

1. When the mafia was running numbers, they were actually offering substantially better odds than what the government does. Imagine how much less bad of a deal it would be if private companies could actually form their own lotteries.

2. You are actually 16 times more likely to get killed in a car accident on the way to purchase your lottery ticket than you are to actually win with the lottery ticket you buy there!

3. Statistically, you will be struck by lightning 5,000 times before you ever win the lottery during your life.

4. If you buy more lottery tickets, you’re not that much more likely to win. Until you start purchasing thousands of tickets, your odds don’t go up that much at all.

5. If you put $20 a month into buying lottery tickets from age 25 to 65, you’ll likely come out with next to nothing. If you instead put that into a mutual fund, you would have $93,626.41, after taxes!

6. If every single person on the planet had purchased a power ball ticket during any one week, only 44 of them would win the lottery. At least it’d make some small child in a third world country happy for a while!

7. If you put $10,000 a week into playing the lottery, it would take you on average 2,809 years to win.

8. You are over 8000 times more likely to be murdered than playing the lottery. You’re probably more likely to be murdered on the way to purchase you’re lottery ticket than you are to actually win it!

9. You are 213 times more likely to die in your bathtub than you are to win the lottery and 146 times more likely to die of a fireworks accident than you are to win the lottery.

10. Only a fraction of the money that individuals put into the lottery is ever used to pay winnings. A large portion of it goes back to the government to spend however they please.

Gracie
It is all a numbers game. In the home state there have been a number of vice squad busts of numbers operations that pay $600 to win a numbers bet while the state pays only $500. Some were even giving two shots on the numbers drawn as the state plays the 3 digit game twice a day. The mental thinking of a true numbers player are to pick 3 numbers and play them every day at a $1 straight and a .50 backup. That use to work until the state decided to run the game twice a day and a lot of people quit playing totally.

Another thing for a lottery player to look at are the odds of the games being played. Again back to the home state as they have a 5 number game played daily and the odds there are 1:575,757 to win. Pots have reached over $400,000 as they roll over and not roll down like here in Florida. I don't even think about buying a ticket until that pot hits 300k which is maybe once every 4 or 5 months or so.

Games such as Powerball and Mega Millions are holes to throw your money into. The odds of winning the top prize are out of sight and even winning a lesser prise is not worth wasting your money on.

Before the Powerball and Mega Millions the home state had the normal pick 6 lottery. When it first came out the pots were not growing that often so the income was not there. The state decided to up the numbers pool and thus reduce the numbers of jackpot winners. Again the odds were greater and the pots did grow as did the income. At that time I also had a start limit and would not even buy a ticket until the pot reached 50 million. I did hit 5 out of 6 three times and if that 18 would have been a 38 I would have retired years ago.

Well since the changes the state has made I may only spend $10 for the year as the old saying someone has to win still works.

Oh yeah, it was not until 2010 that the home state approved casino gambling and as yet not one of the approved sites has opened. But then again in the townships where city laws do not apply the "spin to win" Internet cafe are in almost any available building.

A friend used to say that you have the same chance of winning whether you buy a ticket or not.

...
 

AMEN:bigbow:

I know the odds are astronomical, but when the jackpot rolls over a few times and the payoff is hundreds of millions of dollars, I usually will spend $5.00, just so I can fantasize for a week about dinners in Paris, yachts, private jets, Bentleys, mansions, etc. I know that I will never win, but for maybe $20 a year I enjoy the daydreams.

SPOTD Award
 

It's early.........but I'm giving away the SWIMDAWG Post of the Day Award now. Great quote! :)

Not true. But close. :)

For a couple of bucks a week, I figure False-Hope is better than No-Hope. :MOJE_whot:
The odds are against winning? Gee, who would have guessed.

That's why I don't buy lottery tickets, the odds are insane...I prefer a much better gamble...slot machines!:pepper2:

That's it!
 

No more baths for me!

Huh?

That is an excellent point. The odds are so low that your chances of winning a top prize jackpot are effectively zero. A good example is the Mega Millions game. The chances of winning the big prize are approximately 1 in 175 million (per Wikipedia). Imagine if each Mega Millions player purchased five tickets, and all of those ticket holders were sitting in football stadiums holding 80,000 people. It would require 437 stadiums to hold them all. The chances of winning if there was only one stadium full of people would be extremely low; but what are the chances of you holding the one winning ticket chosen in over 400 full stadiums? Lotto in all of its forms is a scam put on and promoted heavily by your state governments. Generally, approximately half of lotto income goes to the states right off the top and they put the rest into the prizes (varies by state - NY is the worst in its Lotto game where they return only 40% to the "winners"). Then if you beat those astronomical odds, they charge state income taxes (NY will hit you for 7.97%; if you live in New York City, add another 3%). NY started its lottery in 1967, and except for the four years I was in the Navy, I've lived in NY. I don't know a single person who has won a NY jackpot over those 44 years. "Hey - you never know?" Yes you do.

What most people can't comprehend is the odds probability of winning.
For the Florida Lottery I believe the odds are in the vicinity of 22,000,00 to one. That's twenty two million to one!!! So I always like to say, in order to put this into prospective-pick one number from 1 to 22,000,000 and see if you made the right selection. If you can't do this then you'll be ripping up your ticket. If fact, I believe that most people attempting to beat 100 to 1 odds are probably never going to be successful. Go ahead and play the 100 to 1 odds probability game with someone. Write down a number from 1-100 and don't show the number to the person you are playing along with. Have them pick a number from 1-100 and see if they selected the number you wrote down. This is what you'd have to do to beat 100 to 1 odds. When the game gets to 22,000,000------well you see what I mean. Play the slots or the horses instead. It's much more enjoyable and lot more fun!!!

:agree:

Was the "huh" to the bath?

I buy $10 tickets for which ever one is next after Christmas and stick them in the stocking. Creates hope, but no change.

That's how i felt, until a very close friend stopped in a gas station to fill up this tank,got $2 change and decided to buy 2 tickets.Won $43,000,000 after taxes.It changed him completely,plus females that would not give him the time of day came out of the woodwork. I was always trying to fix him up with friends from work,not much luck.I don't see him much anymore,go figure,but when i do,there is no substance to our conversations,all small talk.Money changes people,and usually not for the good.:sad:

I look at it this way. If you don't buy a ticket you can't win. If you do play your odds are 50-50. You win or you lose.

Try to tell all of those people and groups that won that it is a worthless
investment.

That said every year I donate $5 to the lottery - but only when there is a big payout.

So does this mean you're not gonna clean up your act? :shocked: HA-HA!!!

:pepper2:

Bill :wave:

That too! :laugh:

Actually.... I just read this this morning and haven't taken a bath yet! I'm holding out to win the lottery! I'm thinking people will start buying me tickets.

I had a friend that used to say, "the lottery is a tax on the stupid"

I have never ever bought a lottery ticket. Nor have I ever been seriously tempted to buy one.
However, I did keep up a running correspondence with Publishers Clearing House for about a month once.

The wife and i buy a fantasy for a buck when we have a long drive. What if... Can be a great way to pass the time.

I spent some time googling winners, not a pretty outcome for most.

I'm with this post!!! Wouldn't know how to buy one...well I could buy one but not sure how the system works to find out if I had won. I've not been tempted neither as it seems like throwing money away w/o having a good result.

I also did the PCH thing years ago and regretted it as they kept sending junk/mail for a very long time after I quit. It was silly and a waste of time on my part to think I'd have had a chance. Saving the money and investing it seems like a much better return!!

Lotteries
 

One of our former Governors in Vermont said that the lottery was a "tax on the dumb"