The easy answer?
I didn't buy a lottery ticket.
Before anyone starts telling me how smart that was, let me say that I thoroughly intended to buy one but I forgot.
Who knows if that $2 could have solved all of my financial problems--now I'll never find out. At least until the next $100+ million dollar lottery.
I read somewhere (and, of course, can find no reference to it now) that one's chances of winning, while witheringly slim, are somewhat better if the jackpot goes over $100 million. So when it does, and if I remember, I buy ONE ticket.
That's right. I blow $2 on a virtual impossibility.
Donna at Surviving and Thriving knows whereof I write. She even admits to buying a lottery ticket or two or six over the course of a year.
I never win lotteries, not even local ones. When my youngest daughter's school put on a fundraising dinner/auction each year and requested (more like demanded!) that each child sell 10 raffle tickets at $25 a piece, I couldn't bear the thought of hitting up my friends, so I bought all the tickets myself (which seemed fair to me because the raffle funded scholarships, and my daughter was getting a significant reduction in her tuition as a result). Over the course of four years, I had 40 chances to win, and never came close.
But like Donna, I don't think $2 is too much to spend for the chance to dream of winning millions. It's a lovely exercise to mentally spend all of that money on myself, my children, my charities, my world.
In a good year, I've spent, at most, $20 on the lottery. It's money I haven't spent on nail salons, super-fancy coffee drinks, or jewelry. (I have nothing against any of those, they just aren't my particular vices.)
Donna quotes one financial guru as calling the lottery "a tax on people who can't do math."
Yep. That would be Grace. Bad at math. Good at dreaming.
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7 comments:
Thanks for the link. Incidentally, I spent just $1 on the Mega Millions because I bought only one ticket. I did spend another dollar on the state Lotto, because I always buy them in tandem.
As you say (and as I said), that's $2 I didn't spend on other items from the nonessential/fun part of my budget.
Put another way: If I buy a $1 candy bar that won't get me any closer to wealth, either. But it tastes good every now and then.
I have stopped buying the r***y things, because being the eternal optomist I am I actually expect to win. So imagine my disappointment when I am let down yet again.
I used to buy lottery tickets at school as part of a group, but the organizer retired and now no one else has taken it on.
In the past I've had great luck at raffles always winning one or more items. That being said the last two I entered I won NOTHING so I think my lucky days are over. Crap.
A dollar or two for dreaming once in a while is cheap IMHO.
My DH always buys tickets with people from work. He said if they win and he was the jack*( who didn't participate for a couple of bucks he'd be PO. So in that case he wins.
I rarely buy lottery tickets either, but once in a blue moon I'm tempted!! Every year my father on law gives me a card full of lottery tickets for my birthday. I never win. I'd rather have the $15 cash since its a "sure thing"! lol!
Hah -- I, too, succumbed, to the tune of $6.00 but it was kind of fun to be in a line at the "packy" (visiting Boston at the time) and wishing everyone good luck and having the guy explain how to fill out the form. See, I told him, I am supporting my home state of Mass. Yes, he intoned in a deep, Caribbean accent, the governor LOVES you. There was a carnival feel to it -- people who wouldn't normally indulge were giggling self-consciously plunking down their dough. It was fun to swim with the zeitgeist.
Thanks for the updates on blogs -- enjoy so many of them!
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