On the lure of the lottery

Wow, it's been a while. I wonder if I even remember how to do this...

Anyhow, I've been kicking this one around in my head for a while, and now the time has come to finally blog about it.

When I changed offices, I wound up sitting behind the woman that handles the lottery pool at my new office. If you've never encountered an office lottery pool, these are the folks that put money every week to buy a bunch of lottery tickets, with the hope that one day, one of those tickets will hit the big jackpot and they will all split the winnings. Sitting where I sit, I'm quite often a witness as people come by and drop of their money and have their various conversations, about what the jackpot is this week, what the cash value is, what each person's share would be, whether it would be enough to quit their jobs or not. I don't know if this is standard lottery pool procedure, but it wouldn't surprise me in anyway to know that it is.

Now, I have to make a couple things clear - I'm not opposed to gambling, at least responsible gambling. I have a regular poker game that I'm a semi-regular at. We play relatively small stakes, and have fun hanging out. Really, responsible gambling is no different than any other form of entertainment, with the exception of the fact that there's zero chance of you getting your movie or amusement park admission back. However, and I apologize upfront if anyone who reads this participates in a lottery pool on a regular basis, continual lottery play on a serious level just seems to me to be a less than brilliant idea. I guess if you're just throwing in the odd dollar a week for a single Powerball ticket, it's not a big deal, but that's not what many of these people are doing. I know this because a) I see some of the transactions, and b) because a group of them that play a certain game all won over $200 a piece shortly after I started over there, which they all put right back into their balance for buying future tickets, and they are all well back into having paying on a weekly basis. I think the one guy said he was good for 7-8 weeks after that win. That means he's putting at least $25 a week towards the lottery. And you here folks talk about needing more for retirement. I'd love to see the numbers on what even a relatively conservative investment of $25 a week could net you by retirement time. One things for sure, it's WAY more than your expected return from buying the lottery tickets every week. That's the thing about the lottery - the only way for someone who plays week in and week out to come out ahead is to catch that lightning in a bottle and get the big payday. Chances are these folks will wind up having almost literally flushed hundreds and even thousands of dollars down the toilet by the time they hit retirement (and some probably will continue to do so afterwards).

It strikes me as one of the problems with our society and money that so many people are willing to constantly throw a sure thing (money in the hand) at a pipe dream (a big lottery payday). However, I do enjoy the comic relief that some of their vocalized daydreams provide me.