Lottery tickets?!

P

parmalee

peripatetic artisan
Valued Senior Member
OK, first of all, shame on me for reading Yahoo! Finance. I don't know why I do it--and I don't really do it that often--but I have this strange fascination with crap "news" sources. Anyways, stumbled upon this:

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/...-lowest-earners-spend-on-vices-050244627.html

wherein, this is claimed:
Excluding those who don’t spend at all, workers making less than $30,000 a year spend on average 13% of their income on lottery tickets...
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13 percent?!?! I didn't delve too deeply, whether they're talking gross or net and so forth... Don't know. But there is just no freakin' way that there are people who are spending four thousand bucks on lottery tickets.
 
I spend... lemme see... naught, naught... carry the naught... as I cipher it, naught per cent.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
$75/week is, for me, a huge outlay. I spend $30/month, ~$365.00/year.
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As you found out, this forum has a bug where dollar signs mess up formatting. The mess doesn't appear in the preview, only in the actual post. At least you tried to fix it. I'm always surprised when someone's post gets messed up, and they don't even mention it or try to fix it. My guess is that they never noticed.

Here is a fixed version:

Gawdzilla Sama said:
75 dollars per week is, for me, a huge outlay. I spend 30 dollars per month, approximately 365 dollars per year.
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Don't know how much my ex-wife spent on Lotto. But I was shocked at how much money I had after our divorce - even after paying 1000 a month in alimony.
 
Neddy Bate said:
As you found out, this forum has a bug where dollar signs mess up formatting. The mess doesn't appear in the preview, only in the actual post. At least you tried to fix it. I'm always surprised when someone's post gets messed up, and they don't even mention it or try to fix it. My guess is that they never noticed.

Here is a fixed version:
Click to expand...
TIL
 
parmalee said:
But there is just no freakin' way that there are people who are spending four thousand bucks on lottery tickets.
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I was having coffee with a friend in a diner where they also sell those stupid little tickets you crack open like an advent calendar - except you don't get a candy. You don't get anything but waste paper.
A woman came in, a tired middle-aged woman in a threadbare coat, and bought a handful. Crack, crack, crack, discard, discard, discard, dead serious. Buy another handful. We watched in growing horror as she whipped through $80 in five minutes, without appearing to enjoy a single second of it.
For a lot of people with financial problems, winning a jackpot seems like the only possible salvation.
The ads make it look so easy! They show all these ordinary working folks, just like you, or glittery young people having tremendous fun, that you wish you were, and they're all winning. They never advertise the losers; never interview the man who lost his house or the woman whose husband divorced her because he couldn't pay her debts anymore.
In teeny print or sotto-voce, they remind you to "play responsibly" while stoking your potential addiction.
And it's not organized crime doing this - it's government. The same government that doesn't allow cigarettes in public view.
 
OK, is the consensus here that I am incorrect in thinking that these findings are the product of a deeply flawed "study," and they cannot be even remotely accurate? Specifically, this claim:
Excluding those who don’t spend at all, workers making less than $30,000 a year spend on average 13% of their income on lottery tickets...
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It also reported on tobacco (@ 30 thousand or less income) (13%), alcohol (11%), gambling (4%), but I figured, at least people get something from these other "vices."

I'm just finding it odd that I am the one who seems to be struggling with accepting this. I mean, I generally have a very low opinion of people, an especially low opinion of Americans, and, frankly, even struggle to acknowledge that most Americans are, in fact, people. It would be hard for me to even think less of people than I already do, but... If this is accurate... Chhhrrrist.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
Do you object to people betting on sporting events or craps or blackjack?
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I don't object to anything, I just can't figure it out. The article mentions "gambling" separately from "lottery." I''ve never been remotely interested in gambling, but, I suppose, I can appreciate it somewhat more. It passes time, I guess. And some games seem a whole lot more interesting than others; well, depending upon one's perspective within it.

But the lottery? What enjoyment can anyone derive from that? But more to the point: we're talking about people who make less than 30 grand a year, and they're spending over four thousand of it on lottery tickets? If we entertain the increasingly rare scenario in which people are handed a physical pay cheque every two weeks, it's kind of like taking every 7th or 8th cheque, and saying, "Meh. Just keep it... or toss it. Whatever." And these are people who don't really have a whole lotta extra cash to spare. Kinda mind-boggling, no?


Edit: And about the same amount on tobacco products. I smoke--a fair bit, actually. Fewer side-effects than anti-psychotics, and I like my tobacco as much as I like coffee and tea. But, I only hand roll cigarettes with proper, pure, organic tobacco. My annual cost: less than three hundred bucks--and that works out to about 300 or so packs of cigarettes. I'm saving about four thousand bucks a year by not smoking shit that tastes like stale ass, and is packed full of all kinds of crap other than tobacco. WTF?!
 
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parmalee said:
...it's kind of like taking every 7th or 8th cheque, and saying, "Meh. Just keep it... or toss it. Whatever."
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Hind sight is 20/20.
You have the privilege of looking back on times they did not win, and saying 'they just threw their money away'. Before the draw, there are two possible outcomes - one of which is a million dollar win. That's the nature of gambling.

It's like Spock burning all the fuel in Galileo 7, on the faint hope that the plume would be seen by the Enterprise. In his case, he didn't just burn 13% of his budget; he burned 100% - but the huge gamble paid off.

Like Spock and crew dying on the planet, living on $30K year can be considered by some to not be tenable. So they might as well set aside a significant sum on the gamble of getting out.
 
DaveC426913 said:
living on $30K year can be considered by some to not be tenable.
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I've never made 30 K in one year in my life. :)

On the other hand, if you look at lottery tickets as an investment, it's a low probability of making a profit but a high potential return with a minimal amount risked.

On the other other hand, multiple tickets don't significantly increase your chances of winning, so you might as well just buy one ticket for each draw.
 
I play with the jackpots are over $100,000,000. Arbitrary cut-off point. One dollar with a one hundred million dollar payoff. And a cup of coffee costs more than that these days. BFD.
 
sideshowbob said:
On the other other hand, multiple tickets don't significantly increase your chances of winning, so you might as well just buy one ticket for each draw.
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Sure it does. Doubling the number of tickets doubles your chances. That's a significant increase.
 
Gawdzilla Sama said:
I play with the jackpots are over $100,000,000. Arbitrary cut-off point. One dollar with a one hundred million dollar payoff. And a cup of coffee costs more than that these days. BFD.
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See, I figure the other way around makes more sense.

It's not as if "only" winning 2 million - as opposed to 100 - is anticlimactic. Any large amount is going to change your life.
So, given a choice between
- "a stupid amount of money with a miniscule chance of winning", and
- "a stupid amount of money with a larger chance of winning"
why not go for the larger chance?
 
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