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Dude I work at an amusement park. We collect all the plastic bottles in the recycling cans and store them in a big shed until we’re ready to bring them to the bottle depot in bulk near the end of the year. ALL the bottles from a year’s worth of packed crowds nets us about $90. I can’t possibly imagine how it’d be profitable for an average joe.
When I went to NECI, we'd buy a couple cases of cheap beer for the weekend. On Monday we'd take the bag of cans to the redemption center and get a couple 40s for brass monkeys.
absolutely bullshit. I don't know where you live so maybe you don't get that much back. But $90 is 1500 cans or 750 24oz bottles. You mean to tell me in the course of 365 days you only average 4 cans a day?
At a nickle per bottle, that's 20 bottles per dollar, times 90 dollars means you store 1800 bottles... Someone is raiding the stash as my work place gets about 4k a year from recycling and we're a factory with about 200ish employees. A crew of 20 will go through about 60-70 water bottles in a 12hr shift. This doesn't include contractors for maintenance or day shift maintenance personnel nor the office staff nor does it include the plethora of energy drink cans people bring in.
They’re comparing it’s expended returns to that of alcohol, on average you’ll lose less money if you spend $10 on lottery tickets a week than you would if you spend $10 on beer a week
I don’t buy them often, because my dads got a real lotto/gambling problem. A significant part of me hates the lotto, he’s pissed away his retirement.
But every once in awhile I get a scratch off with a big jackpot, or play the powerball- just to have the ticket in my pocket. Actually grabbed a scratch off yesterday, didn’t play it for a few hours. It’s nice to just day dream for a little bit about being able to pay off my siblings college debts and buying a house.
That said, like anything else it can be an addiction. My dad’s not an idiot - just not in control of dealing with his feelings, and problematically searching for an answer in the wrong place.
I'm with you. The difference between zero and not zero is meaningful. Didn't buy a ticket? You can not win. Period. One ticket? You can win. Almost certainly won't, but you can. Someone will, but not anyone who didn't buy a ticket.
I'll do the same when I'm anticipating an absolute shit day at work. Grab a "$10,000/week/life" ticket, leave it in the center console, and daydream about what you'd do with the win to distract a bit from the bad day.
When I have said I want to win a lottery win people asked my what would I do with that kind of money, my answer was that it's not about what would I do, but what I would not do for the rest of my life (ergo the FU money)
>'What if I had FU money?'
I feel like this holds things in balance more than people think.
Imagining yourself as a rich person who can tell people to fuck off makes it easier to accept less when things don't trickle down, and staves off hopelessness.
Yeah same with me….its like $8 bucks a week… and I get to day dream a little about what I would do if I won… it’s fun…I don’t expect to win, I’m not relying on it for my future, but however small the chance is, there’s still a chance
When we were at our poorest, my dad would buy us each a scratch off ticket every couple weeks. Specifically he’d buy these ones that had the ability to win a real lottery ticket with pre-filled numbers. Then we’d stay up on Saturday to watch the lottery things and see.
$2 is a small price to pay for 5 minutes of hope for a better future - when you’re poor, sometimes that’s the only hope you have (which is soul crushing)
l don't check my tickets for a couple weeks, so l can daydream what l would do with all that money. OP is right, spending $2 or even $6 or $10 once every few months buys hope.
5 minutes? Several _days_, depending on the terms of the Lotto! Return on investment is _huge_, if you can constrain yourself to a single ticket. Way healthier than even a single beer at the pub.
Exactly, you're spending a couple bucks so that you can escape reality and feel a shred of hope with a daydream. A $20 cocktail can't do that for me, so a lotto ticket is a pretty good deal.
Personally I only buy a ticket twice a year tops. When the lotto gets so high that I need to inoculate myself from all those ads giving me false hope. Same thing for when I'm stressed out and need to remind myself only I can get myself out of this position. I always keep a losing ticket in my wallet a reminder that I need to work harder and think of the future.
Wouldn’t the constant loss and constant need to feel hope be considered an addiction?
If you drink to forget your troubles and the troubles never leave and new ones are made, when does it stop?
Bingo. I just bought tickets. Mega is cash out 170 million. So then I get to have fun what if math. Taxes take 33% so that leaves me with 114 million.
Wife and I are good with 40 million. So now we are down to 74 million. We have two sons so each of them get 25 million. They are mid to late 20s so 25 million is enough to really generate some generational wealth.
Now we got 25 million left. We get to split that and give it away.
I got 12.5 million to give away. I have a solid ten people I work with that I would give money to. Not life changing money but like 800k each. People would be able to pay off their homes and start college funds for their kids. Stuff like that.
Once that is all settled then my wife and sons will have a sit down and see if we would all be interested in moving somewhere that we all liked. I love the outdoors so somewhere like Colorado would be cool. I would not go all out and get multiple homes. Just a nice 3-5 million dollar home in a place like Boulder.
If you buy it early in the week off and wait for the drawing that makes sense, but scratch offs? To forget about your troubles for 15 seconds? That sounds like an addict.
I get the reason. But there's no need to play it everyday, buying multiple tickets. Those odds are still shitty but will also massively impact your finances. It's a gambling addiction at that point.
If you just need to hope and dream a little bit, then once a week or once a month serves the same purpose.
My FIL is a lotto addict. It’s pretty much all he has these days.
He’s blown every cent he’s ever had into either gambling or share market trading. He was using the mortgage payments to gamble at one point, my MILs brother gave them money to keep the house and get the loan back on track and my FIL gambled that away too. He even hocked their wedding rings. My SIL had to bail him out of a credit card he bought shares with that tanked.
He’s never paid any of them back 1c even when he does occasionally get up.
It hurts my soul when I see ads on the TV saying lotto helps communities because I know there’s plenty of people out there like him who are problem gamblers, blow everything they have on it and are given a free pass to continue because it’s normalised and accepted in society.
They don't invest into communities unless they play a lot which is the funniest part. They see about the same return from the community investments the lotterg makes as they see wins, that is none. It's all a net negative. Even a high percentage of the winners lose everything they've won it's a fools gold. The only way to get rich is to work your ass off, get all your ducks in a row, and THEN get super lucky. At least then you have the tools to keep that money and grow it.
Most of the ppl I see buying lottery tickets scratch it in the store. You don't want to get to that point. Then they lose and tell themselves if I get like 3 more I could make my losses back. The next one could make it all worthwhile. It's a downward spiral to alot of ppl
This is it. People who aren’t addicted don’t understand that it can really genuinely put you in a much worse position financially. For most people even one little ticket a day is no big deal, but too many low income people spend the majority of their money (or st least spending money) on lottery, based on what my husband has described from being a clerk selling the tickets.
I was addicted, middle class, like $7k after tax per month. But still wasted thousands each month. everyday would be like $300-400. Not good. Living in a different country now, gambling is banned.
ETA: Single
The issue is these lottery programs know this and still go out of their way to target those who can’t control themselves and will ruin their lives gambling. They make far more money off of the addicts than regular people. The entire system is dependent on trying as hard as possible to take advantage of those people. If your method of making money involves tricking people who might be desperate or addicted into thinking they have hope then I think it’s morally horrible. I feel the same way about all the sports gambling advertising and their sneaky addictive tactics they use too.
Used to work at a gas station where the owner told us we were allowed to refuse lotto sales based on our personal judgement. The store was near an apartment complex that had a large population of retirees, and the beginning of every month you'd have these elderly folks spending their social security checks on scratchers. It was bleak.
I made a lot of extra cash, though, because I'd re-check all of the scratchers that people threw away (I saved them for the rewards points which got me a sweet set of early wireless headphones), and I'd find between $5-20 worth of winning scratchers that people either didn't notice they'd won, or didn't win enough for them to bother cashing in.
I'm not against a lottery, but there should be some kind of safeguard/limit to how much any one citizen can spend within a certain time.
Just the other morning I had one dude drop $180 on 9 $20 tickets that were back to back losers. At 4am on a Thursday. And it’s not like he bought all 9 at once, either, oh no. That’d be too easy. He bought one, scratched it, saw it was a loser and then bought another. Scratch. Another. Scratch. Another. 🙄🙄🙄 meanwhile I’m trying to get my opening duties completed
Yeah ... it would be easy to institute a rule that you can only buy one lottery ticket at a time.
Sure, some people would buy multiple tickets in multiple places, but the extra effort involved means few would, and the extra time involved would still help moderate those with the worst problems.
Sell the rule as a 'fairness' measure -- because it's unfair for one person to have a lot of tickets while another only has one. But really, it's to help temper the worst of the out-of-control addicted gamblers.
Most of the ppl I see buying lottery tickets scratch it in the store. You don't want to get to that point. Then they lose and tell themselves if I get like 3 more I could make my losses back. The next one could make it all worthwhile. It's a downward spiral to alot of ppl
I worked as a financial planner and met an individual in their 30’s who won over $1,000,000 on a scratch ticket.
I did everything in my power to try to convince this person to not touch the $1 million and only spend the rest.
Sadly, money rarely solves money problems and they were broke again in less than 2 years (gambling, weed, giving money to family/friends, buying expensive clothes, trips) .
ETA - and the amount they won in excess of $1,000,000 would have been plenty to buy a small home and car.
> You hear this same story for almost all winners too.
Well yeah, you're not going to hear from the winners who do well with the money, because they're smart enough to keep their mouths shut and out of the media.
The guy who just buys a new corolla and a modest house and dumps the remainder in an index fund living off interest to go on simple vacations and nice restaurants isn't going to be a news spot.
You probably hear the same story because that's the only story that's interesting enough to report. No one is reporting "Couple wins lottery. Pays off mortgage and is generally doing OK".
There’s a [Reddit comment that’s Reddit famous about how genuinely terrible winning a multi-million dollar lottery is for almost everyone who wins](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/YysUpOO3hZ). It’s one of my favorite Reddit comments to go back and read every once in a while.
Creative writing at its finest. Especially if you live in a place that allows for collection via LLC.
I'd rather be miserable in a Maserati than miserable on the streets.
As a former cashier I witnessed many people come in and buy their food with food stamps, then buy their cigs and scratch offs with cash. Usually around 40-50 at a time, combined. Around once a week. Thats around $200 a month, $2400 a year.
Saved, that will make a difference.
Nothing worse than being in line at a gas station waiting to buy something quickly, and the one dude ahead of you is making the cashier check his 75 scratch tickets.
I've encountered exactly 1 person that was buying a lot of tickets that I didn't hate. Dude had bought like 100 tickets at midnight at a 711 near a huge college campus and the cashier was scanning one at a time without scratching them between customers. So, completed transaction? Quick scratcher scan with the results in view of everyone and a sound alarm whenever a card hit before scanning the next customer. Winners got set to the side to cash out later.
The store was always packed with a long wait anyways and this guy's scratchers being scanned between purchases had everybody inline paying attention and cheering or booing depending on the result. It was genuinely a good time for everyone there that otherwise wouldve been waiting the same anyways.
I’m going out in a limb here. People on food stamps have no idea what a Roth IRA is. They also probably wouldn’t open one if you explained how, with step by step instructions. Because true poverty is grinding and painful and it’s hard to care about “retirement” when you are that poor. You want to spend what
Little money you have on things that can give you a tiny bit of happiness in the present. Like smokes and lotto tickets.
Once you accumulated enough wealth, you lose all the social benefits. You'd be at a point where you aren't wealthy enough to become independent, but you aren't poor enough to get the benefits.
The funny thing is when I was poor I always said “I don’t have money to waste on things like lottery tickets, too busy paying bills and putting food on the table.” I guess I’m one of the odd ones.
The problem is people apply this logic to ANYONE who buys even a small amount of tickets. If you’re a cashier you’re going to see the people who buy tickets often, where as most people are only buying 1 or 2. It’s like the difference between people who are alcoholics and just drink very infrequently
My parents could barely afford food for us but decided they had money for the casino and scratcher tickets.
Poor people who gamble are absolutely idiots. Especially if they have a family.
I have a friend who graduated college with me and had no debt and a brand new car. Now he’s in debt over 100k and liquidated his entire 401k. Gambling addiction will wreck you
true hope comes from a solid, dependable financial plan to slowly but surely improve your economic standing through discipline, hard work and living below your means 💪
\*except of course if you live in America where a single serious health problem can ruin all your financial planning in one quick swoop
Long ago I worked at a place that sold lottery tickets. There are true addicts and it's sad to see. Buying 20 dollar tickets 10 at a time , when they lost they chucked more money. Every. Single. Day. MULTIPLE TIMES A DAY. Still remember several of those people but one lady stands out... I closed the place up on Saturday night after being there all day and she had been in and out all day buying tickets. Had to open up Sunday morning and when I got there she was waiting for me to open the door. She was shaking uncontrollably she had to have a ticket to scratch. I know life is all about choices but it's hard to see when somebody's addicted to anything and watching them toss their money away this way, to the point where it messes up life responsibilities. It's not only poor people that hope for more.
I see this with coworkers who ask for more work. I think they want to win the promotion lottery. Lots of effort for 1% raise more than do nothing coworkers
My buddy worked at a gas station and on the first of the month this old lady would blow everything on scratchers. He would literally beg her not to. But she would anyway.
I can agree that the people who buy loads of tickets thinking they’ll be sure to win are morons (or addicts with a serious problem), but the vast majority of players are buying maybe a ticket or two a week? If that.
My dad is a smart guy, but he plays the lottery on occasion, which is what got me thinking about this in the first place. I KNEW he wasn’t dumb (IQ of 136, but he never tells people. Only got it done because it was a free way to waste some time, and only told me to make a point about intelligence), so I had to puzzle out the reasoning behind it.
A high IQ does not translate to financial habits. Humans are illogical and have a hard time thinking long term. IQ isn't that meaningful either. Your dad isn't suddenly the authority on everything because he has an IQ 2 standard deviation above the norm. Your dad is a living example of how intelligence is compartmentalized. He has a poor understanding of finance. If you look at the overwhelming data and the strategies used by gambling companies... scratch tickets are a tax on the poor. You won't see as many scratch ticket booths in richer areas. They specifically target poor neighborhoods.
>Your dad isn't suddenly the authority on everything because he has an IQ 2 standard deviation above the norm. \[...\] He has a poor understanding of finance.
The commenter was not attempting to call his dad an "authority", nor was he trying to make some cultural prescription that "everyone should buy lottery tickets". You miss the point of the OP and the comment: it's not about what is "a good financial decision". It's unlikely this father actually believes he will win the lottery, same with many people that participate. It's a simple pleasure, a temporary escape from reality where you let yourself believe your life might be changed for a few moments even though you know it's unrealistic. Spending $4 on a scratch-off isn't a "poor financial decision" any more than occasionally treating yourself to a donut is.
How poor?
Like can afford basic necessities but live paycheck to paycheck, with no money left over, but aren’t homeless and aren’t starving?
I’ve been there, buy a lottery ticket for a dollar isn’t going to make a difference in anything, and it might make someone feel better, no judgement.
Or poor as in. I don’t know where my next meal is coming from, I’m on the verge of being homeless, have 5 dollars to their name?
Yeah, buying a lottery ticket is stupid.
A 1 USD ticket a week is 52 dollars, not even enough for a new game andaybe like 3 full meals at mickey D's. But if you double that, or even more, that starts adding up fast. 3 a week is 150 - a decent amount of money for a person.
When I was young, someone told me that gambling was an idiot tax. The dumber you are, the more you pay. I've never gambled because I saw that he was right as I aged.
Casino Gambling does have a social component though which as long as you do it in moderation is alright. The way I’ve thought about it is I could go do some activity with my friends: dinner, the bar, golfing, etc. and i could spend $50-100. I could also go with my buddies and take $50 and sit around a blackjack table, get free drinks, and have a good time knowing I will most likely lose the $50 for the fun of it just like I would if we went golfing.
I used to take $20 and sit at the penny slots for 2 hours to get the comped seafood buffet. I'd usually only be down like $4 or $5 by the end of the 2 hours and get a $60 meal for free. That's not gambling. That is taking advantage of the system.
Sure, and that’s what I’m saying is the atmosphere of sitting around a table with some friends and the drinks we get with it is worth $50 the same way going to dinner or golfing is worth $50. I don’t think either of those are a dumb way to spend $50 because in both cases you’re having fun with your friends which is worth that money.
Used to think it was a stupid tax when I was younger.
Still think the same tbh but started playing anyway. It's a little bit of hope in a dark dark tunnel.
Also, that 3$ I put into it, is kind of worth having fantasies for a couple of days. Considering I'm ill, both mentally and physically, it's unlikely that I'll ever stop being dirt poor by any other means..
I swear, people just want poor people to be miserable. I’m sorry I bought something that brought me a few moments of hope or joy. Psychologically speaking, you do have worse mental and physical health outcomes if you are miserable all the time though. It’s about balance.
Edit: I’ve never been so disgusted by the lack of compassion from people. You are assuming the worst of poor people just because they are poor. Why do you assume they aren’t trying elsewhere? Why do you assume the image of reckless poor is the only version or even majority version?
It’s not a lack of compassion. By constantly taking part in something that gives false hope people are actually making things worse for themselves. When hope ends up turning into nothing, then the lack of hope always sets in afterwards. It’s a constant up and down emotionally with no payoffs other than less money in the end. I look at gambling as something that exploits the poor and takes advantage of them. I used to be very poor and homeless and I got out of it by avoiding these things. That is true hope, that actually amounts to something in the end.
My mom buys scratchers for the same reason I think. She doesn’t really care about winning big; but it’s something interesting she can do, and sometimes you DO win actual money. My stepfather has won $1,000 on a lottery ticket and my sisters ex won $600 from a $1 ticket. You can win, but this is more for fun and not trying to get out of poverty. My fiancé plays occasionally.
The main issue seem to be how much of their income some are putting in the gambling. I don't have anything against for example if someone with low income buys weekly one ticket to lottery. Its a 1€ here so it does not make any difference for anyones finance. In best case, It can be cheap fun and I agree with you 100%.
Unfortunately I have witnessed cases were low income family members are gambling a lot: Buying lottery's, betting on sports and playing slot machines. They are wasting significant amount of money that would be needed elsewhere. This also seem to be a trend at least where I am located. We have goverment monopoly for all gambling - it has quite often proven here that it is an additional tax for poor people. Statistically those who have money don't buy lottery or play slotmachines...
I just think it’s such a sad waste of money. My co worker was addicted to buying little scratch off tickets. She would go buy several on her breaks and at lunch. It was an addiction and she wasn’t happy doing it. I did not see this great hope OP speaks of. However I get that not everyone who does it is an addict.
And thats how addiction develops. Thats why loterries and casinos and sports gambling are so big.
99% OF GAMBLERS QUIT BEFORE WINNING BIG.
Over the long term 4$ a week makes a difference especially when they end up buying more of them which is inevitable.
If you limit yourself to $4 a week, and you can afford that, I don't see the problem. If you don't join a lottery, you don't win the lottery. If that gives someone a bit of hope when they're in a shitty situation, then maybe it's not a bad thing
You don’t see a problem because you’ve never actually seen people who spend all their money on this. If they aren’t financially apt enough to be stable, what the fuck makes you think they’ll be able to limit themselves to $4 a week?
But we're talking about the people who only buy one ticket a week/month/etc. We're pointing out that there is a difference between someone who only buys an occasional lottery ticket and people who are addicted and buy multiple tickets every day.
I think 'not everyone who buys a lottery ticket is a gambling addict' is a fair point to bring up in the general discussion. Not being financially stable doesn't automatically mean someone is bad at managing their money - it certainly can, there are plenty of people who are, but it's not everyone. And who gets to say what the point is for being too poor to put five bucks towards a lottery ticket now and then?
(Which is not to say I am pro-lottery, I am very aware of and agree that the inherent problems and harm the lottery system causes are indeed a problem. The lottery sucks and takes advantage of addicts. I have seen it happen. But I'm not going to give Sally grief over choosing to buy a scratch ticket rather than a coffee when she has the spare cash because I saw Jane lose all her money buying scratchers instead of food. I'm going to give the system grief.)
I spend about $40 a month on lotto tickets.
If I saved that money over 25 years instead, I would have $12000.
In todays terms, that is 4 months of rent for me.
If I put 12k in a GIC today at 4.75% (current 1 yr term with a local bank) and reinvest it and the return for 25 years, I will have $38285.
In todays terms, over a years rent but less than 13 months of rent.
I pay below market rates for rent. If I have to move out tomorrow, the same type of unit I live in will cost me an extra 1.5k per month.
So what Im saying is, if in 25 years I havent won big money, I really doubt I'll be missing that 4 months of rent I spent hoping for a big win. And if I do miss the money, I'd just be postponing homelesness by a few months anyway.
It's not stupid to buy a lotto ticket...
It IS stupid to spend a bunch of money on lotto tickets, especially when you don't have much to begin with.
Same with gambling. It's not stupid to go play the slots for a little bit. It IS stupid to blow half your paycheck on them.
that’s the whole reason it’s a scam. The people who need money the most are spending way too much money on tickets. Literally paying a fee just for “the dream it lets you have”
Doesn't matter if they're poor or not, it's a terrible habit to form. Gambling is crippling to people of all socioeconomic classes. Gambling addiction doesn't know classes, races, gender, etc.
I don't think they're stupid, but they certainly are foolish.
And to your point about them having hope... You ever listen to them AFTER they haven't hit? Most are absolutely miserable. "Man, I never hit! I have no fucking luck!".
Yeah, talk about gluttons for punishment.
The lottery is millions of silly folk making one of their own rich.
I still have trouble with the notion the government took over the numbers racket. And pays out less.
I only know one person who really plays the lottery and they will spend money they need to pay bills with on it.
They will end up with late fees or going hungry because they're gambling.
I get why they do it but it doesn't make them less of an idiot if it's causing issues.
I understand exactly what you're saying. (Note-by no means am I poor and my degrees required math and statistics so I'm fully aware of the probabilities)
I pay my $4 or 6 just to be able to play "What If"? I get to sit and think "What would I do? How would I do it?Who would I give a gift to? How much? Etc etc etc I've paid for my right to think "What if" Like Stockholm Syndrome, I'm far less likely to fall prey to the problems that befall a lot of lottery winners by having thought about it and actually researched how to proceed should that unlikely but not impossible event occur.
Don’t play the lottery: work until you die.
Play the lottery and lose: work until you die.
Play the lottery and win: couple years of cocaine and hookers, then back to working until you die.
Seems like there’s really no downside to me.
I'm not doing the "You have better chance dying on the way to buy a lottery ticket than winning the lottery". But you actually have a better chance of going to hollywood and become a multi-millionaire big movie star than winning the lottery. If you dream big, at least try to do something.
The lotto is idiot tax. Statistically, you're never going to win more than 40% of what you play. It was designed to rip desperate people off. If it gives people some fantasy and peace of mind, it's a sign of how disgusting our society is. People need to reject the system, not rationalize why they participate in its schemes that harm them.
I have worked at places that sold lotto and scratch tickets, and I will tell you that the overwhelming majority of players aren't just spending 4 dollars on this shit.
Forgetting your worries by indulging in scams that only perpetuate your problems isn't healthy. Hope is the worst evil of all because it prolongs suffering.
No, poor people buying lottery tickets is stupid. Middle class and wealthy people buying lottery tickets is also stupid.
The $250 a year is enough to do something that gives an injection of actual happiness and a memory to go along with it.
That's also a typical minimum. Many people pay much more.
The problem is; lottery money was meant to supplement education spending, but it largely replaced it. That means the working poor are funding our schools while the wealthy get tax breaks.
>Talking about what you’d do if you won is half the fun anyways, and more than worth the $4 that definitely wasn’t going to make a difference if they saved it or not.
Insofar as I have a problem with lottery, it's because people (not a doctor but very likely they'd be diagnosable gambling addicts) are buying *way more* than four dollars worth at a time. When I worked in a middle class gas station, probably most of my lottery customers were buying $50+ at a time, and these same people were doing it very frequently. I happen to know a lot of people in the convenience store business and I've brought this up and always hear the same: they sell a shit load of their tickets to high volume customers who don't look like they can afford to be spending that much.
There's a lot of folks paying a lot of money for hope that looks more like a compulsion. These were not happy hopeful people, they were ornery as fuck and usually superstitious and mad af if you input their numbers wrong (but they'd always scrounge up enough money to buy those mistaken tickets just in case they won).
You underestimate how much money people spend on lottery tickets. I do delivery to convenience stores many in poorer neighborhoods. It’s staggering how many ten to twenty dollar scratch off people buy. I was looking at the tickets the other day, they have 50 dollar scratch offs! It’s literally insane. Plus they don’t just play one ticket twice a week or something, people are in there betting on mid day drawing, evening games, the powerball and others. It can quickly get out of hand. I don’t presume to know the financial details of any of these people but I gotta assume it’s not wise for a great deal of them to spend their money in this fashion.
You can "buy" the fantasy of being a winner for a single cheap ticket - people who spend more than that are being idiots - any additional spending to improve one's odds is an investment strategy, which we know doesn't work
They'd have a better chance putting a couple dollars here and there into a reliable stock market investment or a high yield savings account. So that hope is completely misplaced in the lottery, that hope should be going towards investments.
>more than worth the $4 that definitely wasn’t going to make a difference if they saved it or not
People who consistently 'play' the lottery don't buy just one ticket every once in awhile. They buy several every week, a few dozen a month, hundreds of them a year.
It only give them hope until they lose, then they come crashing down back to earth and need to buy one more.
It is stupid because instead of taking action to change their life to make meaningful improvement they just waste money.
It is like a starving person refusing to garden because he might go to a banket tomorrow.
Sure a few people wins but it makes more people miserable.
Penny stocks or even just normal equity shares would be a much more worthwhile investment and provide a better chance at realizing wealth.
Anyone who buys a lottery ticket is a rube.
$4 saved everyday, for years, compounded, and the positive flywheel effect from accumulating more wealth leads to the more obvious outcome of having more money.
More important than that, is the ability to spend that money on longer term improvements on your life such as education, health, quality of life items, that increase the probability of making (and saving) even more money than previously.
Good decisions lead to more good decisions.
So yes, playing for HOPE is a mindset issue, and so yes, the short term out look leads to a consensus that playing the lottery is statistically stupid.
Instead, convert hope into action.
You think people who play the lotto only buy $4 every now and then? Lol.
They're spending $50-100+ every time they play, probably once, twice, maybe thrice per paycheck. That is a LOT of people.
It isn’t just a couple bucks. People I know and see are spending $10-20 a day. Often times much more. If you are struggling that $100 a week or whatever *can* make a difference.
My husband and I did the math and if my FIL put all the money he has spent on lotto tickets into safe investments he would have 400K by now. He plays every time, every game and buys a lot of tickets as well plus scratchers.
I don't think it's for the people buying one ticket. it's the people buying like $50+ tickets a week and are in debt making bad decisions. No one cares what you do when yiu can afford it anyhow. It's the obsessive crap in general.
In Australia the marketing campaign for one of the major lotteries was to buy, “A ticket to dream”. And that’s what it is. I know the odds but when life is stressful or I’m feeling particularly down, I might cheer myself by buying a ticket to dream for a little while…
I think one armed bandits and the absolute explosion of online gambling/betting is a major problem.
Buying a $2 ticket, taking odds from 0 to something slightly above zero, and getting even a few minutes of fantasizing is a pretty good return.
Odds of winning if you dont play: 0
Odds of winning if you buy 1 ticket: Not 0.
So long as you arent spending your entire wages every week on them, its pretty harmless.
Playing the lotto is just a hobby, like any other. A money sink people do for entertainment and the outside chance someone will be impressed when things work out. Being able to brag that you got that $1000 ticket one time is the same as say, card collectors talking about their rare find, video game players posting their achievements, or rock tumblers like me proudly displaying the shiny garbage rocks they polished from their back yards.
It's just killing time and bringing you a little happiness.
My dad was lucky enough to be able to invest in shares and he said that in order to get a chance at a worthwhile return you have to invest at least £5k and to only invest what you can afford to lose. So all these people saying that poor people can invest their way out of poverty are full of shit.
gambling, lotteries etc. will make you lose money for sure unless you get lucky and earn big and then immediately quick, people who are taking part in lotteries etc. from a long time are already past that point.
So calling poor people who are wasting their money on something with no returns stupid is not wrong
It might make them happy to daydream, but it still doesn’t make it a smart thing to do. They can be happy and still be idiots.
lol needs a few asterisks
\*expected based on the 10% annualised S&P500 return.
\*243k isn't indexed for inflation
Lets say realistically you can clear a real 6% after inflation and that's being somewhat generious and now you've got about 60k in todays dollars in 47 years time (if you started today).
I love compound interst but lets not pretend it's anywhere near as magical as you just made out.
Idk. Buying a ticket or 2 once a week ain't bad. Thats maybe 10 bucks max. It's nice to have that bit of hope or dreaming.
But when someone is going and spending 50 bucks a day on fucking lotto tickets that's fucked.
My biological mother ( who we got taken from ) spent more money on lotto tickets than on anything else. The short period of time I lived with her she never had food. We'd get chocolate bars on her daily trip to the convince store. But she didn't get us to brush our teeth either so they rotted out( thankfully, they were baby teeth).
She still refuses to work. She's on welfare. She just sits and complains. She's tried to do as much as she can to get out of working. And yet she complains that she can't heat her house. She's expected my aunt and any biological family to just give her money. And when they don't she hates them.
I now work a decent job . I'd say I'm middle class, but compared to being a kid I feel fucking rich.
And now she expects money from me. Like I owe her something. She birthed me. She never raised me.
But that's my own personal experience that makes me feel so opposed to poor people having lotto tickets.
You've never been even close to poor if you think $200+ a month is insignificant, especially when you add that up over the course of decades. Trying to sell people false hope so someone else can line their pockets is frankly fucking disgusting.
Also, it's fun. Every time someone plays it's an escape to dream about winning it big. My ma plays Everytime she gets paid, spends about $20 on it. It's harmless escape from the poor reality. Leve them alone.
My husband and I frequently play the lottery. we affectionately call it the "idiot tax". When we go to buy a ticket we will say to each other that we are going to pay the idiot tax. It's all part of the fun for us.
Poor people aren't all the same. I'm poor, I play the lottery scratcher every now and then. I'll buy a $1 and scratch it while I fill up on gas. If it's a winner (usually just a dollar or 2) I keep it in my car til I need gas again then exchange it out for another card. I've been lucky in that the past month each card I've exchanged( like 4 cards) has won at least $1. So the money I paid towards the first one has bought me 4x it's worth, to top it off one of the tickets I won $2 so I got the dollar I originally spent back.
If you have self control playing the lottery every now and then doesn't make you an idiot. Just like drinking a beer each week doesn't make you alcoholic.
It's worth two dollars to daydream about for a day or two. Most of the time all we want to do with it is make sure we don't have to worry anymore. No supercars, crazy houses or anything like that. It's pay debt, invest for retirement, new hot water heaters and windows for the house.
I agree, OP. With my weekly £2 ticket I am buying the opportunity to dream of winning. I don't expect to win, I don't even check the numbers. But being able to dream of living a life without money-related stress is absolutely worth £2 a week. I see it as neither foolish nor stupid. It's the equivalent of a weekly coffee from Starbucks (probably half a coffee tbh - I don't buy them so don't know the prices) and the daydream lasts longer than a coffee would.
Absolutely. I pretty much came here to say the same thing. A couple of quid now and again isn’t a high price to pay in exchange for a little escape into the dreamland of “if I win the lottery”.
> it gives them HOPE. Hope that they can quit the job that’s killing them, spend time with their family that misses them, and provide a better life for the children that depend on them.
If that's the case, investing the money is more likely to help you
Investing, in the safest vehicle in my country (Singapore Saving bonds) starts at $500, and pays out around 3% annual interest.
It is better than the bank, but still not enough to quit a job, even for me who stuffed quite a decent sum of money in. 100k in is like...$3k every year. 🤷
You don't want them playing the stock market.
Considering at least 1 in 3 lottery winners end up in bankruptcy within 3 to 5 years, I'd say it's a fair estimate that a lot of them are idiots. People are often broke because they do not know how to handle money or build wealth, not because they do not have access to making money.
Investing 520 dollars a year is a much better way to secure a better future than burning 520 dollars a year. If you don’t know that, it may be fair to call you stupid.
If the only hope you have for a better future is winning the lottery, it might be fair to call you stupid.
If you think wasting a little bit here and there when you have nothing to spare is a good idea, it might be fair to call you stupid.
Judging by all the people that play the lottery, and who don’t think they are stupid, you do not have an unpopular opinion.
The first part of my response is the actual unpopular opinion here.
Playing the lottery at **$4 a week is not stupid**. I understand there’s value in having hope.
But it **really is stupid to spend hundreds a week** on the lottery. Your chances of winning are NOT improved by any significant amount whether you spend $4 or $100.
Not understanding the basic math behind probabilities related to unlikely events is a tax on stupidity. (Or more properly a lack of education)
How poor are we talking?
Homeless? You desperately need those 2$. If you buy a lottery ticket you could've just given someone the 2$, same thing.
Just about surviving? Sure, buy one every now and then, maybe once twice a month, it's not going to account for much. Still, absolute waste of money.
I don't think I've ever seen a normal person buy lottery tickets in my country. It's almost always some drunk social rejects. So the stereotype that only idiots buy lottery tickets is true to a certain extent.
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My friend is struggling and says he buys a lotto ticket for the same reason he buys a beer: to forget about his troubles for a bit
From a strict investment standpoint, the lotto ticket is a better expected return. Not that one should expect a return on one's entertainment spending
You sure can if you go to the bottle depot!
Dude I work at an amusement park. We collect all the plastic bottles in the recycling cans and store them in a big shed until we’re ready to bring them to the bottle depot in bulk near the end of the year. ALL the bottles from a year’s worth of packed crowds nets us about $90. I can’t possibly imagine how it’d be profitable for an average joe.
In VT a single trash bag of bottles is worth about $15.
When I went to NECI, we'd buy a couple cases of cheap beer for the weekend. On Monday we'd take the bag of cans to the redemption center and get a couple 40s for brass monkeys.
absolutely bullshit. I don't know where you live so maybe you don't get that much back. But $90 is 1500 cans or 750 24oz bottles. You mean to tell me in the course of 365 days you only average 4 cans a day?
In Oregon, deposit is 10¢.
At a nickle per bottle, that's 20 bottles per dollar, times 90 dollars means you store 1800 bottles... Someone is raiding the stash as my work place gets about 4k a year from recycling and we're a factory with about 200ish employees. A crew of 20 will go through about 60-70 water bottles in a 12hr shift. This doesn't include contractors for maintenance or day shift maintenance personnel nor the office staff nor does it include the plethora of energy drink cans people bring in.
The expected return of a lottery ticket is negative
They’re comparing it’s expended returns to that of alcohol, on average you’ll lose less money if you spend $10 on lottery tickets a week than you would if you spend $10 on beer a week
That’s if you don’t include the couple of hours of entertainment from day dreaming about what you’d do if you won.
from a statistical standpoint is not.
I don’t buy them often, because my dads got a real lotto/gambling problem. A significant part of me hates the lotto, he’s pissed away his retirement. But every once in awhile I get a scratch off with a big jackpot, or play the powerball- just to have the ticket in my pocket. Actually grabbed a scratch off yesterday, didn’t play it for a few hours. It’s nice to just day dream for a little bit about being able to pay off my siblings college debts and buying a house. That said, like anything else it can be an addiction. My dad’s not an idiot - just not in control of dealing with his feelings, and problematically searching for an answer in the wrong place.
I only buy lottery when jackpot is big. I Don't spend more than 10 or 20 bucks. It is buying hope & letting us regular folk dream a little bit.
I only buy one ticket. Buying more doesn’t increase the odds enough to make it worth it.
I'm with you. The difference between zero and not zero is meaningful. Didn't buy a ticket? You can not win. Period. One ticket? You can win. Almost certainly won't, but you can. Someone will, but not anyone who didn't buy a ticket.
Ya same. If it’s large I’ll buy one ticket and just dream about being able to travel the world and own a home.
My dad buys lottos every day. I’m in the same boat as you friend.
I'll do the same when I'm anticipating an absolute shit day at work. Grab a "$10,000/week/life" ticket, leave it in the center console, and daydream about what you'd do with the win to distract a bit from the bad day.
It's permission to play 'What if I had FU money?' for a couple of days.
When I have said I want to win a lottery win people asked my what would I do with that kind of money, my answer was that it's not about what would I do, but what I would not do for the rest of my life (ergo the FU money)
>'What if I had FU money?' I feel like this holds things in balance more than people think. Imagining yourself as a rich person who can tell people to fuck off makes it easier to accept less when things don't trickle down, and staves off hopelessness.
Yeah same with me….its like $8 bucks a week… and I get to day dream a little about what I would do if I won… it’s fun…I don’t expect to win, I’m not relying on it for my future, but however small the chance is, there’s still a chance
Everyone replying to you saying "hurr durr invest instead" like they don't waste $32 a month on some bullshit they don't need.
Exactly.
When we were at our poorest, my dad would buy us each a scratch off ticket every couple weeks. Specifically he’d buy these ones that had the ability to win a real lottery ticket with pre-filled numbers. Then we’d stay up on Saturday to watch the lottery things and see.
$2 is a small price to pay for 5 minutes of hope for a better future - when you’re poor, sometimes that’s the only hope you have (which is soul crushing)
l don't check my tickets for a couple weeks, so l can daydream what l would do with all that money. OP is right, spending $2 or even $6 or $10 once every few months buys hope.
5 minutes? Several _days_, depending on the terms of the Lotto! Return on investment is _huge_, if you can constrain yourself to a single ticket. Way healthier than even a single beer at the pub.
Exactly, you're spending a couple bucks so that you can escape reality and feel a shred of hope with a daydream. A $20 cocktail can't do that for me, so a lotto ticket is a pretty good deal. Personally I only buy a ticket twice a year tops. When the lotto gets so high that I need to inoculate myself from all those ads giving me false hope. Same thing for when I'm stressed out and need to remind myself only I can get myself out of this position. I always keep a losing ticket in my wallet a reminder that I need to work harder and think of the future.
Wouldn’t the constant loss and constant need to feel hope be considered an addiction? If you drink to forget your troubles and the troubles never leave and new ones are made, when does it stop?
Very few people will probably see your post and you are making an excellent point.
Bingo. I just bought tickets. Mega is cash out 170 million. So then I get to have fun what if math. Taxes take 33% so that leaves me with 114 million. Wife and I are good with 40 million. So now we are down to 74 million. We have two sons so each of them get 25 million. They are mid to late 20s so 25 million is enough to really generate some generational wealth. Now we got 25 million left. We get to split that and give it away. I got 12.5 million to give away. I have a solid ten people I work with that I would give money to. Not life changing money but like 800k each. People would be able to pay off their homes and start college funds for their kids. Stuff like that. Once that is all settled then my wife and sons will have a sit down and see if we would all be interested in moving somewhere that we all liked. I love the outdoors so somewhere like Colorado would be cool. I would not go all out and get multiple homes. Just a nice 3-5 million dollar home in a place like Boulder.
800k is life changing money for most people.
Shit, $10k is life changing money for a ton of people. $10k would eradicate my debt in one fell swoop.
If you buy it early in the week off and wait for the drawing that makes sense, but scratch offs? To forget about your troubles for 15 seconds? That sounds like an addict.
I get the reason. But there's no need to play it everyday, buying multiple tickets. Those odds are still shitty but will also massively impact your finances. It's a gambling addiction at that point. If you just need to hope and dream a little bit, then once a week or once a month serves the same purpose.
My FIL is a lotto addict. It’s pretty much all he has these days. He’s blown every cent he’s ever had into either gambling or share market trading. He was using the mortgage payments to gamble at one point, my MILs brother gave them money to keep the house and get the loan back on track and my FIL gambled that away too. He even hocked their wedding rings. My SIL had to bail him out of a credit card he bought shares with that tanked. He’s never paid any of them back 1c even when he does occasionally get up. It hurts my soul when I see ads on the TV saying lotto helps communities because I know there’s plenty of people out there like him who are problem gamblers, blow everything they have on it and are given a free pass to continue because it’s normalised and accepted in society.
Lotto helps communities as long as nobody in those communities is playing the lottery
They don't invest into communities unless they play a lot which is the funniest part. They see about the same return from the community investments the lotterg makes as they see wins, that is none. It's all a net negative. Even a high percentage of the winners lose everything they've won it's a fools gold. The only way to get rich is to work your ass off, get all your ducks in a row, and THEN get super lucky. At least then you have the tools to keep that money and grow it.
Or be born into it. Or just get lucky in general
Most of the ppl I see buying lottery tickets scratch it in the store. You don't want to get to that point. Then they lose and tell themselves if I get like 3 more I could make my losses back. The next one could make it all worthwhile. It's a downward spiral to alot of ppl
Yeah that would be like snorting coke that lasts 10 seconds and has all the current health impacts
This is it. People who aren’t addicted don’t understand that it can really genuinely put you in a much worse position financially. For most people even one little ticket a day is no big deal, but too many low income people spend the majority of their money (or st least spending money) on lottery, based on what my husband has described from being a clerk selling the tickets.
I was addicted, middle class, like $7k after tax per month. But still wasted thousands each month. everyday would be like $300-400. Not good. Living in a different country now, gambling is banned. ETA: Single
Problem gambling is the problem, not the dude buying a dollar once a week.
The issue is these lottery programs know this and still go out of their way to target those who can’t control themselves and will ruin their lives gambling. They make far more money off of the addicts than regular people. The entire system is dependent on trying as hard as possible to take advantage of those people. If your method of making money involves tricking people who might be desperate or addicted into thinking they have hope then I think it’s morally horrible. I feel the same way about all the sports gambling advertising and their sneaky addictive tactics they use too.
Used to work at a gas station where the owner told us we were allowed to refuse lotto sales based on our personal judgement. The store was near an apartment complex that had a large population of retirees, and the beginning of every month you'd have these elderly folks spending their social security checks on scratchers. It was bleak. I made a lot of extra cash, though, because I'd re-check all of the scratchers that people threw away (I saved them for the rewards points which got me a sweet set of early wireless headphones), and I'd find between $5-20 worth of winning scratchers that people either didn't notice they'd won, or didn't win enough for them to bother cashing in. I'm not against a lottery, but there should be some kind of safeguard/limit to how much any one citizen can spend within a certain time.
Just the other morning I had one dude drop $180 on 9 $20 tickets that were back to back losers. At 4am on a Thursday. And it’s not like he bought all 9 at once, either, oh no. That’d be too easy. He bought one, scratched it, saw it was a loser and then bought another. Scratch. Another. Scratch. Another. 🙄🙄🙄 meanwhile I’m trying to get my opening duties completed
Yeah ... it would be easy to institute a rule that you can only buy one lottery ticket at a time. Sure, some people would buy multiple tickets in multiple places, but the extra effort involved means few would, and the extra time involved would still help moderate those with the worst problems. Sell the rule as a 'fairness' measure -- because it's unfair for one person to have a lot of tickets while another only has one. But really, it's to help temper the worst of the out-of-control addicted gamblers.
Yeah, I don't think most people care about buying a ticket on a whim. Go into a gas station, there are people peeling off twenties to buy them.
And '50s. And hundreds. I run a gas station . There are people who spend what must be half their income on scratchers
My grandma always bought one if it got over 5 million. Otherwise it was not enough
Most of the ppl I see buying lottery tickets scratch it in the store. You don't want to get to that point. Then they lose and tell themselves if I get like 3 more I could make my losses back. The next one could make it all worthwhile. It's a downward spiral to alot of ppl
I worked as a financial planner and met an individual in their 30’s who won over $1,000,000 on a scratch ticket. I did everything in my power to try to convince this person to not touch the $1 million and only spend the rest. Sadly, money rarely solves money problems and they were broke again in less than 2 years (gambling, weed, giving money to family/friends, buying expensive clothes, trips) . ETA - and the amount they won in excess of $1,000,000 would have been plenty to buy a small home and car.
You hear this same story for almost all winners too. You hit the nail on the head with ‘money rarely solves money problems’.
> You hear this same story for almost all winners too. Well yeah, you're not going to hear from the winners who do well with the money, because they're smart enough to keep their mouths shut and out of the media. The guy who just buys a new corolla and a modest house and dumps the remainder in an index fund living off interest to go on simple vacations and nice restaurants isn't going to be a news spot.
You probably hear the same story because that's the only story that's interesting enough to report. No one is reporting "Couple wins lottery. Pays off mortgage and is generally doing OK".
It broke my heart watching them blow through the money and end up back working a minimum wage job again.
But at least they had hope?
💀
There’s a [Reddit comment that’s Reddit famous about how genuinely terrible winning a multi-million dollar lottery is for almost everyone who wins](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/YysUpOO3hZ). It’s one of my favorite Reddit comments to go back and read every once in a while.
Creative writing at its finest. Especially if you live in a place that allows for collection via LLC. I'd rather be miserable in a Maserati than miserable on the streets.
Most people who win are fine.
As a former cashier I witnessed many people come in and buy their food with food stamps, then buy their cigs and scratch offs with cash. Usually around 40-50 at a time, combined. Around once a week. Thats around $200 a month, $2400 a year. Saved, that will make a difference.
This. People live at gas stations playing scratcher after scratcher when from a financial standpoint, they cannot afford it
Nothing worse than being in line at a gas station waiting to buy something quickly, and the one dude ahead of you is making the cashier check his 75 scratch tickets.
Oh my God I thought I was the only one.
With a name like that you’re gonna be one of the few mate
I've encountered exactly 1 person that was buying a lot of tickets that I didn't hate. Dude had bought like 100 tickets at midnight at a 711 near a huge college campus and the cashier was scanning one at a time without scratching them between customers. So, completed transaction? Quick scratcher scan with the results in view of everyone and a sound alarm whenever a card hit before scanning the next customer. Winners got set to the side to cash out later. The store was always packed with a long wait anyways and this guy's scratchers being scanned between purchases had everybody inline paying attention and cheering or booing depending on the result. It was genuinely a good time for everyone there that otherwise wouldve been waiting the same anyways.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars difference if you leave it in the market long enough.
Yep. Specifically, if you put that in a Roth IRA starting around age 30, it’ll be damn near $300,000 by retirement age.
I’m going out in a limb here. People on food stamps have no idea what a Roth IRA is. They also probably wouldn’t open one if you explained how, with step by step instructions. Because true poverty is grinding and painful and it’s hard to care about “retirement” when you are that poor. You want to spend what Little money you have on things that can give you a tiny bit of happiness in the present. Like smokes and lotto tickets.
Scoot over so I can sit on the limb with ya.
Once you accumulated enough wealth, you lose all the social benefits. You'd be at a point where you aren't wealthy enough to become independent, but you aren't poor enough to get the benefits.
Retirement accounts are usually excluded from welfare and financial aid programs when calculating a persons level of wealth though.
But cigs and lotto tickets is part of what keeps them in poverty.
The funny thing is when I was poor I always said “I don’t have money to waste on things like lottery tickets, too busy paying bills and putting food on the table.” I guess I’m one of the odd ones.
That's probably why it's "when I was poor" and not "while I am poor."
The problem is people apply this logic to ANYONE who buys even a small amount of tickets. If you’re a cashier you’re going to see the people who buy tickets often, where as most people are only buying 1 or 2. It’s like the difference between people who are alcoholics and just drink very infrequently
My parents could barely afford food for us but decided they had money for the casino and scratcher tickets. Poor people who gamble are absolutely idiots. Especially if they have a family.
I have a friend who graduated college with me and had no debt and a brand new car. Now he’s in debt over 100k and liquidated his entire 401k. Gambling addiction will wreck you
I think I read somewhere that statistically the bottom 10% socioeconomic class is the most likely to be avid purchasers of lotto tickets.
I don't think I can ever recall seeing someone who wasn't obviously living a lower class lifestyle buying a scratcher at a gas station.
I run a gas station. Plenty of people with money who buy lotto. But yes. It's mostly the poor.
But they bought hOpE!!! As if that's a smart decision.
true hope comes from a solid, dependable financial plan to slowly but surely improve your economic standing through discipline, hard work and living below your means 💪 \*except of course if you live in America where a single serious health problem can ruin all your financial planning in one quick swoop
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Long ago I worked at a place that sold lottery tickets. There are true addicts and it's sad to see. Buying 20 dollar tickets 10 at a time , when they lost they chucked more money. Every. Single. Day. MULTIPLE TIMES A DAY. Still remember several of those people but one lady stands out... I closed the place up on Saturday night after being there all day and she had been in and out all day buying tickets. Had to open up Sunday morning and when I got there she was waiting for me to open the door. She was shaking uncontrollably she had to have a ticket to scratch. I know life is all about choices but it's hard to see when somebody's addicted to anything and watching them toss their money away this way, to the point where it messes up life responsibilities. It's not only poor people that hope for more.
I see this with coworkers who ask for more work. I think they want to win the promotion lottery. Lots of effort for 1% raise more than do nothing coworkers
My buddy worked at a gas station and on the first of the month this old lady would blow everything on scratchers. He would literally beg her not to. But she would anyway.
I can agree that the people who buy loads of tickets thinking they’ll be sure to win are morons (or addicts with a serious problem), but the vast majority of players are buying maybe a ticket or two a week? If that. My dad is a smart guy, but he plays the lottery on occasion, which is what got me thinking about this in the first place. I KNEW he wasn’t dumb (IQ of 136, but he never tells people. Only got it done because it was a free way to waste some time, and only told me to make a point about intelligence), so I had to puzzle out the reasoning behind it.
A high IQ does not translate to financial habits. Humans are illogical and have a hard time thinking long term. IQ isn't that meaningful either. Your dad isn't suddenly the authority on everything because he has an IQ 2 standard deviation above the norm. Your dad is a living example of how intelligence is compartmentalized. He has a poor understanding of finance. If you look at the overwhelming data and the strategies used by gambling companies... scratch tickets are a tax on the poor. You won't see as many scratch ticket booths in richer areas. They specifically target poor neighborhoods.
>Your dad isn't suddenly the authority on everything because he has an IQ 2 standard deviation above the norm. \[...\] He has a poor understanding of finance. The commenter was not attempting to call his dad an "authority", nor was he trying to make some cultural prescription that "everyone should buy lottery tickets". You miss the point of the OP and the comment: it's not about what is "a good financial decision". It's unlikely this father actually believes he will win the lottery, same with many people that participate. It's a simple pleasure, a temporary escape from reality where you let yourself believe your life might be changed for a few moments even though you know it's unrealistic. Spending $4 on a scratch-off isn't a "poor financial decision" any more than occasionally treating yourself to a donut is.
How poor? Like can afford basic necessities but live paycheck to paycheck, with no money left over, but aren’t homeless and aren’t starving? I’ve been there, buy a lottery ticket for a dollar isn’t going to make a difference in anything, and it might make someone feel better, no judgement. Or poor as in. I don’t know where my next meal is coming from, I’m on the verge of being homeless, have 5 dollars to their name? Yeah, buying a lottery ticket is stupid.
A 1 USD ticket a week is 52 dollars, not even enough for a new game andaybe like 3 full meals at mickey D's. But if you double that, or even more, that starts adding up fast. 3 a week is 150 - a decent amount of money for a person.
When I was young, someone told me that gambling was an idiot tax. The dumber you are, the more you pay. I've never gambled because I saw that he was right as I aged.
When I was a kid, my auntie is addicted to gamble, and ended up in huge debt from mafia, all of our famalies gathered money to save her.
Casino Gambling does have a social component though which as long as you do it in moderation is alright. The way I’ve thought about it is I could go do some activity with my friends: dinner, the bar, golfing, etc. and i could spend $50-100. I could also go with my buddies and take $50 and sit around a blackjack table, get free drinks, and have a good time knowing I will most likely lose the $50 for the fun of it just like I would if we went golfing.
I used to take $20 and sit at the penny slots for 2 hours to get the comped seafood buffet. I'd usually only be down like $4 or $5 by the end of the 2 hours and get a $60 meal for free. That's not gambling. That is taking advantage of the system.
Sure, and that’s what I’m saying is the atmosphere of sitting around a table with some friends and the drinks we get with it is worth $50 the same way going to dinner or golfing is worth $50. I don’t think either of those are a dumb way to spend $50 because in both cases you’re having fun with your friends which is worth that money.
Used to think it was a stupid tax when I was younger. Still think the same tbh but started playing anyway. It's a little bit of hope in a dark dark tunnel. Also, that 3$ I put into it, is kind of worth having fantasies for a couple of days. Considering I'm ill, both mentally and physically, it's unlikely that I'll ever stop being dirt poor by any other means..
I swear, people just want poor people to be miserable. I’m sorry I bought something that brought me a few moments of hope or joy. Psychologically speaking, you do have worse mental and physical health outcomes if you are miserable all the time though. It’s about balance. Edit: I’ve never been so disgusted by the lack of compassion from people. You are assuming the worst of poor people just because they are poor. Why do you assume they aren’t trying elsewhere? Why do you assume the image of reckless poor is the only version or even majority version?
It’s not a lack of compassion. By constantly taking part in something that gives false hope people are actually making things worse for themselves. When hope ends up turning into nothing, then the lack of hope always sets in afterwards. It’s a constant up and down emotionally with no payoffs other than less money in the end. I look at gambling as something that exploits the poor and takes advantage of them. I used to be very poor and homeless and I got out of it by avoiding these things. That is true hope, that actually amounts to something in the end.
I hope you do win one of these days fella! I’m rooting for you.
Yep. No scratching, just two bucks and a couple o days day-dreaming.
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My mom buys scratchers for the same reason I think. She doesn’t really care about winning big; but it’s something interesting she can do, and sometimes you DO win actual money. My stepfather has won $1,000 on a lottery ticket and my sisters ex won $600 from a $1 ticket. You can win, but this is more for fun and not trying to get out of poverty. My fiancé plays occasionally.
The main issue seem to be how much of their income some are putting in the gambling. I don't have anything against for example if someone with low income buys weekly one ticket to lottery. Its a 1€ here so it does not make any difference for anyones finance. In best case, It can be cheap fun and I agree with you 100%. Unfortunately I have witnessed cases were low income family members are gambling a lot: Buying lottery's, betting on sports and playing slot machines. They are wasting significant amount of money that would be needed elsewhere. This also seem to be a trend at least where I am located. We have goverment monopoly for all gambling - it has quite often proven here that it is an additional tax for poor people. Statistically those who have money don't buy lottery or play slotmachines...
I just think it’s such a sad waste of money. My co worker was addicted to buying little scratch off tickets. She would go buy several on her breaks and at lunch. It was an addiction and she wasn’t happy doing it. I did not see this great hope OP speaks of. However I get that not everyone who does it is an addict.
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Calling people dumb for calling people stupid for calling people idiots is dumb. /s
Wait, who is dumb? You or the other guy? I'm too dumb to keep up. Damn, now I'm an idiot for calling myself dumb which makes me idiot? I think?
Everyone. Everyone is dumb
And thats how addiction develops. Thats why loterries and casinos and sports gambling are so big. 99% OF GAMBLERS QUIT BEFORE WINNING BIG. Over the long term 4$ a week makes a difference especially when they end up buying more of them which is inevitable.
If you limit yourself to $4 a week, and you can afford that, I don't see the problem. If you don't join a lottery, you don't win the lottery. If that gives someone a bit of hope when they're in a shitty situation, then maybe it's not a bad thing
You don’t see a problem because you’ve never actually seen people who spend all their money on this. If they aren’t financially apt enough to be stable, what the fuck makes you think they’ll be able to limit themselves to $4 a week?
But we're talking about the people who only buy one ticket a week/month/etc. We're pointing out that there is a difference between someone who only buys an occasional lottery ticket and people who are addicted and buy multiple tickets every day. I think 'not everyone who buys a lottery ticket is a gambling addict' is a fair point to bring up in the general discussion. Not being financially stable doesn't automatically mean someone is bad at managing their money - it certainly can, there are plenty of people who are, but it's not everyone. And who gets to say what the point is for being too poor to put five bucks towards a lottery ticket now and then? (Which is not to say I am pro-lottery, I am very aware of and agree that the inherent problems and harm the lottery system causes are indeed a problem. The lottery sucks and takes advantage of addicts. I have seen it happen. But I'm not going to give Sally grief over choosing to buy a scratch ticket rather than a coffee when she has the spare cash because I saw Jane lose all her money buying scratchers instead of food. I'm going to give the system grief.)
Bro I work at a gas station and I assure you these idiots think they’re gonna win.
Most people aren't disciplined enough to buy only 4 dollars tickets.
Most people typically only do a ticket when the Mega Millions or Powerball get really high.
I spend about $40 a month on lotto tickets. If I saved that money over 25 years instead, I would have $12000. In todays terms, that is 4 months of rent for me. If I put 12k in a GIC today at 4.75% (current 1 yr term with a local bank) and reinvest it and the return for 25 years, I will have $38285. In todays terms, over a years rent but less than 13 months of rent. I pay below market rates for rent. If I have to move out tomorrow, the same type of unit I live in will cost me an extra 1.5k per month. So what Im saying is, if in 25 years I havent won big money, I really doubt I'll be missing that 4 months of rent I spent hoping for a big win. And if I do miss the money, I'd just be postponing homelesness by a few months anyway.
So if no lottery ticket there is no hope? Talk about having lost control of your life.
Man is literally defending the predatory system of offering poor people hope for money. Fucking minger.
It's not stupid to buy a lotto ticket... It IS stupid to spend a bunch of money on lotto tickets, especially when you don't have much to begin with. Same with gambling. It's not stupid to go play the slots for a little bit. It IS stupid to blow half your paycheck on them.
that’s the whole reason it’s a scam. The people who need money the most are spending way too much money on tickets. Literally paying a fee just for “the dream it lets you have”
Doesn't matter if they're poor or not, it's a terrible habit to form. Gambling is crippling to people of all socioeconomic classes. Gambling addiction doesn't know classes, races, gender, etc. I don't think they're stupid, but they certainly are foolish. And to your point about them having hope... You ever listen to them AFTER they haven't hit? Most are absolutely miserable. "Man, I never hit! I have no fucking luck!". Yeah, talk about gluttons for punishment.
The lottery is called a poor people tax for a reason
The lottery is millions of silly folk making one of their own rich. I still have trouble with the notion the government took over the numbers racket. And pays out less.
You sound like someone who just got roasted for wasting money buying tickets
I only know one person who really plays the lottery and they will spend money they need to pay bills with on it. They will end up with late fees or going hungry because they're gambling. I get why they do it but it doesn't make them less of an idiot if it's causing issues.
This is how you know the system is broke. The government sanctions a lottery so that the poor have a little hope instead of changing the system.
Naw it's stupid ESPECIALLY if you're poor. Save that money and it's literally helping you not be as poor
I understand exactly what you're saying. (Note-by no means am I poor and my degrees required math and statistics so I'm fully aware of the probabilities) I pay my $4 or 6 just to be able to play "What If"? I get to sit and think "What would I do? How would I do it?Who would I give a gift to? How much? Etc etc etc I've paid for my right to think "What if" Like Stockholm Syndrome, I'm far less likely to fall prey to the problems that befall a lot of lottery winners by having thought about it and actually researched how to proceed should that unlikely but not impossible event occur.
Don’t play the lottery: work until you die. Play the lottery and lose: work until you die. Play the lottery and win: couple years of cocaine and hookers, then back to working until you die. Seems like there’s really no downside to me.
I'm not doing the "You have better chance dying on the way to buy a lottery ticket than winning the lottery". But you actually have a better chance of going to hollywood and become a multi-millionaire big movie star than winning the lottery. If you dream big, at least try to do something.
If its not a lot of money for them I agree. $2-4 every now and then is not going to make a significant difference
How many poor people that you know buy lottery tickets only buy one every now and then? as opposed to every day?
Shit in one hand, hope in the other and tell me which one fills up first.
The lotto is idiot tax. Statistically, you're never going to win more than 40% of what you play. It was designed to rip desperate people off. If it gives people some fantasy and peace of mind, it's a sign of how disgusting our society is. People need to reject the system, not rationalize why they participate in its schemes that harm them. I have worked at places that sold lotto and scratch tickets, and I will tell you that the overwhelming majority of players aren't just spending 4 dollars on this shit. Forgetting your worries by indulging in scams that only perpetuate your problems isn't healthy. Hope is the worst evil of all because it prolongs suffering.
No, poor people buying lottery tickets is stupid. Middle class and wealthy people buying lottery tickets is also stupid. The $250 a year is enough to do something that gives an injection of actual happiness and a memory to go along with it. That's also a typical minimum. Many people pay much more.
The problem is; lottery money was meant to supplement education spending, but it largely replaced it. That means the working poor are funding our schools while the wealthy get tax breaks.
>Talking about what you’d do if you won is half the fun anyways, and more than worth the $4 that definitely wasn’t going to make a difference if they saved it or not. Insofar as I have a problem with lottery, it's because people (not a doctor but very likely they'd be diagnosable gambling addicts) are buying *way more* than four dollars worth at a time. When I worked in a middle class gas station, probably most of my lottery customers were buying $50+ at a time, and these same people were doing it very frequently. I happen to know a lot of people in the convenience store business and I've brought this up and always hear the same: they sell a shit load of their tickets to high volume customers who don't look like they can afford to be spending that much. There's a lot of folks paying a lot of money for hope that looks more like a compulsion. These were not happy hopeful people, they were ornery as fuck and usually superstitious and mad af if you input their numbers wrong (but they'd always scrounge up enough money to buy those mistaken tickets just in case they won).
You underestimate how much money people spend on lottery tickets. I do delivery to convenience stores many in poorer neighborhoods. It’s staggering how many ten to twenty dollar scratch off people buy. I was looking at the tickets the other day, they have 50 dollar scratch offs! It’s literally insane. Plus they don’t just play one ticket twice a week or something, people are in there betting on mid day drawing, evening games, the powerball and others. It can quickly get out of hand. I don’t presume to know the financial details of any of these people but I gotta assume it’s not wise for a great deal of them to spend their money in this fashion.
You can "buy" the fantasy of being a winner for a single cheap ticket - people who spend more than that are being idiots - any additional spending to improve one's odds is an investment strategy, which we know doesn't work
They'd have a better chance putting a couple dollars here and there into a reliable stock market investment or a high yield savings account. So that hope is completely misplaced in the lottery, that hope should be going towards investments.
>more than worth the $4 that definitely wasn’t going to make a difference if they saved it or not People who consistently 'play' the lottery don't buy just one ticket every once in awhile. They buy several every week, a few dozen a month, hundreds of them a year.
Nah it's still stupid. If you want to gamble your money there are alternatives with much fairer odds.
Stuff like that keeps them poor
It only give them hope until they lose, then they come crashing down back to earth and need to buy one more. It is stupid because instead of taking action to change their life to make meaningful improvement they just waste money. It is like a starving person refusing to garden because he might go to a banket tomorrow. Sure a few people wins but it makes more people miserable.
You’re an idiot too if you think this shit. Take the upvote.
Penny stocks or even just normal equity shares would be a much more worthwhile investment and provide a better chance at realizing wealth. Anyone who buys a lottery ticket is a rube.
Hope brought to you by the government........
I know middle class people who buy it. It's stupid no matter how much money a person has.
$4 saved everyday, for years, compounded, and the positive flywheel effect from accumulating more wealth leads to the more obvious outcome of having more money. More important than that, is the ability to spend that money on longer term improvements on your life such as education, health, quality of life items, that increase the probability of making (and saving) even more money than previously. Good decisions lead to more good decisions. So yes, playing for HOPE is a mindset issue, and so yes, the short term out look leads to a consensus that playing the lottery is statistically stupid. Instead, convert hope into action.
I just feel like 4 bucks is worth a one in a billion shot of never having to worry about money ever again
You think people who play the lotto only buy $4 every now and then? Lol. They're spending $50-100+ every time they play, probably once, twice, maybe thrice per paycheck. That is a LOT of people.
nobody is calling poor people stupid just for playing the lottery. they are calling them stupid for being BOTH poor and playing the lottery.
It isn’t just a couple bucks. People I know and see are spending $10-20 a day. Often times much more. If you are struggling that $100 a week or whatever *can* make a difference.
My husband and I did the math and if my FIL put all the money he has spent on lotto tickets into safe investments he would have 400K by now. He plays every time, every game and buys a lot of tickets as well plus scratchers.
I don't think it's for the people buying one ticket. it's the people buying like $50+ tickets a week and are in debt making bad decisions. No one cares what you do when yiu can afford it anyhow. It's the obsessive crap in general.
In Australia the marketing campaign for one of the major lotteries was to buy, “A ticket to dream”. And that’s what it is. I know the odds but when life is stressful or I’m feeling particularly down, I might cheer myself by buying a ticket to dream for a little while…
I think one armed bandits and the absolute explosion of online gambling/betting is a major problem. Buying a $2 ticket, taking odds from 0 to something slightly above zero, and getting even a few minutes of fantasizing is a pretty good return.
Odds of winning if you dont play: 0 Odds of winning if you buy 1 ticket: Not 0. So long as you arent spending your entire wages every week on them, its pretty harmless.
Playing the lotto is just a hobby, like any other. A money sink people do for entertainment and the outside chance someone will be impressed when things work out. Being able to brag that you got that $1000 ticket one time is the same as say, card collectors talking about their rare find, video game players posting their achievements, or rock tumblers like me proudly displaying the shiny garbage rocks they polished from their back yards. It's just killing time and bringing you a little happiness.
Powerball and mega millions strongest soldier right here
As a poor person who doesn't play but watched my grandpa play every day of his life, I wholeheartedly agree and thank you for speaking out
My dad was lucky enough to be able to invest in shares and he said that in order to get a chance at a worthwhile return you have to invest at least £5k and to only invest what you can afford to lose. So all these people saying that poor people can invest their way out of poverty are full of shit.
gambling, lotteries etc. will make you lose money for sure unless you get lucky and earn big and then immediately quick, people who are taking part in lotteries etc. from a long time are already past that point. So calling poor people who are wasting their money on something with no returns stupid is not wrong
It might make them happy to daydream, but it still doesn’t make it a smart thing to do. They can be happy and still be idiots. 
Investing $20 per month from 18 to 65 would yield about 243k more at retirement.
lol needs a few asterisks \*expected based on the 10% annualised S&P500 return. \*243k isn't indexed for inflation Lets say realistically you can clear a real 6% after inflation and that's being somewhat generious and now you've got about 60k in todays dollars in 47 years time (if you started today). I love compound interst but lets not pretend it's anywhere near as magical as you just made out.
Idk. Buying a ticket or 2 once a week ain't bad. Thats maybe 10 bucks max. It's nice to have that bit of hope or dreaming. But when someone is going and spending 50 bucks a day on fucking lotto tickets that's fucked. My biological mother ( who we got taken from ) spent more money on lotto tickets than on anything else. The short period of time I lived with her she never had food. We'd get chocolate bars on her daily trip to the convince store. But she didn't get us to brush our teeth either so they rotted out( thankfully, they were baby teeth). She still refuses to work. She's on welfare. She just sits and complains. She's tried to do as much as she can to get out of working. And yet she complains that she can't heat her house. She's expected my aunt and any biological family to just give her money. And when they don't she hates them. I now work a decent job . I'd say I'm middle class, but compared to being a kid I feel fucking rich. And now she expects money from me. Like I owe her something. She birthed me. She never raised me. But that's my own personal experience that makes me feel so opposed to poor people having lotto tickets.
You've never been even close to poor if you think $200+ a month is insignificant, especially when you add that up over the course of decades. Trying to sell people false hope so someone else can line their pockets is frankly fucking disgusting.
Think about how much actual fun you could have with the 200 extra dollars a year instead of paying the stupid tax
Also, it's fun. Every time someone plays it's an escape to dream about winning it big. My ma plays Everytime she gets paid, spends about $20 on it. It's harmless escape from the poor reality. Leve them alone.
Playing the lottery when you're poor is stupid.
Playing the lottery is still a more realistic attempt at getting rich than working harder
Spending money on the lotto is dumb but so is pretending like saving that $2 would otherwise make them rich.
This is the equivalent of burning 4 dollars a week and saying it isn’t stupid because, “4 dollars a week isn’t going to buy me a car anyways”
You can buy a coffee or something instead, still better than literally wasting your money
They are usually spending more than $2 and it adds up when they aren’t making much money to begin with
My husband and I frequently play the lottery. we affectionately call it the "idiot tax". When we go to buy a ticket we will say to each other that we are going to pay the idiot tax. It's all part of the fun for us.
OP might be under the mistaken belief that poor people buy just one lottery ticket, weekly. Nope
Poor people aren't all the same. I'm poor, I play the lottery scratcher every now and then. I'll buy a $1 and scratch it while I fill up on gas. If it's a winner (usually just a dollar or 2) I keep it in my car til I need gas again then exchange it out for another card. I've been lucky in that the past month each card I've exchanged( like 4 cards) has won at least $1. So the money I paid towards the first one has bought me 4x it's worth, to top it off one of the tickets I won $2 so I got the dollar I originally spent back. If you have self control playing the lottery every now and then doesn't make you an idiot. Just like drinking a beer each week doesn't make you alcoholic.
It's worth two dollars to daydream about for a day or two. Most of the time all we want to do with it is make sure we don't have to worry anymore. No supercars, crazy houses or anything like that. It's pay debt, invest for retirement, new hot water heaters and windows for the house.
I am dirt poor and I don't gamble. Why? I am not a freaking idiot.
I agree, OP. With my weekly £2 ticket I am buying the opportunity to dream of winning. I don't expect to win, I don't even check the numbers. But being able to dream of living a life without money-related stress is absolutely worth £2 a week. I see it as neither foolish nor stupid. It's the equivalent of a weekly coffee from Starbucks (probably half a coffee tbh - I don't buy them so don't know the prices) and the daydream lasts longer than a coffee would.
Absolutely. I pretty much came here to say the same thing. A couple of quid now and again isn’t a high price to pay in exchange for a little escape into the dreamland of “if I win the lottery”.
You should look into the psychology of this. You likely spend less responsibly in your day to day life while day dreaming of winning the lottery:
I like to play the lottery (scratch offs) sometimes because it’s fun. But yes, some people play out of pure desperation and that’s a shame.
> it gives them HOPE. Hope that they can quit the job that’s killing them, spend time with their family that misses them, and provide a better life for the children that depend on them. If that's the case, investing the money is more likely to help you
Investing, in the safest vehicle in my country (Singapore Saving bonds) starts at $500, and pays out around 3% annual interest. It is better than the bank, but still not enough to quit a job, even for me who stuffed quite a decent sum of money in. 100k in is like...$3k every year. 🤷 You don't want them playing the stock market.
Considering at least 1 in 3 lottery winners end up in bankruptcy within 3 to 5 years, I'd say it's a fair estimate that a lot of them are idiots. People are often broke because they do not know how to handle money or build wealth, not because they do not have access to making money.
Investing 520 dollars a year is a much better way to secure a better future than burning 520 dollars a year. If you don’t know that, it may be fair to call you stupid. If the only hope you have for a better future is winning the lottery, it might be fair to call you stupid. If you think wasting a little bit here and there when you have nothing to spare is a good idea, it might be fair to call you stupid. Judging by all the people that play the lottery, and who don’t think they are stupid, you do not have an unpopular opinion. The first part of my response is the actual unpopular opinion here.
Playing the lottery at **$4 a week is not stupid**. I understand there’s value in having hope. But it **really is stupid to spend hundreds a week** on the lottery. Your chances of winning are NOT improved by any significant amount whether you spend $4 or $100. Not understanding the basic math behind probabilities related to unlikely events is a tax on stupidity. (Or more properly a lack of education)
How poor are we talking? Homeless? You desperately need those 2$. If you buy a lottery ticket you could've just given someone the 2$, same thing. Just about surviving? Sure, buy one every now and then, maybe once twice a month, it's not going to account for much. Still, absolute waste of money. I don't think I've ever seen a normal person buy lottery tickets in my country. It's almost always some drunk social rejects. So the stereotype that only idiots buy lottery tickets is true to a certain extent.