The $30,000 Lottery Loser

Wow, I can't believe I forgot to add this story to the posts about what I'd been reading recently: From the New York Times, Aug. 22, a story about a guy who spends $30,000 a year on lottery tickets.

What makes this even worse is that A) he only makes about $40,000 a year; and B) he thinks that because he himself spends $500-700 a week on lottery tickets, he should have won the $5 million jackpot that was claimed by his neighbor, who only spends about $30 a week.

Ok, the fact that he spends 3/4 of his income on lottery tickets is a bit mitigated by the fact that he gets a free apartment as part of his job, but still, he has a wife and kids to take care of! And here's his attitude:

But working is for poor uneducated men — a sucker’s game, he said, where one must run increasingly fast to keep one’s place in line. “You’re making money on the one side and spending it on the other,” he said. “If all you’re doing is working, you’re never going to win.”

I can sympathize with the feeling of running just to stay in place, but someone should have told this guy that blowing all your money on the lottery will make you have to run even harder. I find it incredibly sad that people actually think this way!

$3 - - > $340 million?

I just spent $3 on the lottery. My friend Mortimer kept mentioning how large the MegaMillions jackpot was, so I figured, what the heck. I very rarely play the lottery, for all the reasons we know well: basically, that the odds of winning are so incredibly tiny that it's almost always a big waste of money. But people do win, so every once in a while I decide I don't mind losing a couple of dollars to take my shot. I think I once won $20, and on a couple of other occasions won $5, or a free ticket. Given how seldom I've played, my net loss is probably less than $20.
I tried to play at the deli where I've bought lottery tickets in the past, but the owner said rather sheepishly that he didn't have a machine. "But you used to have one, didn't you?" I asked, suddenly wondering if I had been hallucinating. It turned out he'd changed the name of his business, which meant he had to reapply for his lottery license. He must have been kicking himself about the timing, with this record-setting huge MegaMillions jackpot building up!