When my father-in-law was past 80, my husband asked him why he buys lotto tickets. The old man said that he still has so many dreams in life that pertains to material things. He had wanted to buy a piece of land in the rural area that he could make his home. It will have an orchard and vegetable garden for sustenance. And then he would gather his grandchildren who have no substantial livelihood and give them work as a driver or gardener or even as a househelp. The old man may be dreaming but I came to realize that he had a point there. What would life be when you are old and you have no more dreams? So maybe I have to continue buying a lotto ticket even in my twilight years.
I buy a lotto ticket every draw.. I buy the local (Ontario 6/49) 6/49 ticket and there are 10 numbers for $10.00 plus the encore which is extra.. The ticket costs me $10.00 plus $1.00 for the extra per draw.. There are 2 draws weekly, Wednesday and Saturday.. That adds up to $11.00 per draw and $22.00 per week... Now, I have been playing the same 10 numbers for about 8 months, each draw... I repeat the numbers after each draw for the next draw.. I take the ticket for 2 draws which is $22.00 each week.. I have won several times but not enough to cover my investment (or gamble) however close.. I figure that sooner or later those numbers will come up and I will win a decent amount of $$$$$ I have a dream and if this is all I do, then why not.. Should I eventually win the big prize, I will worry then what to do with the $$$$$ The money I spend definitely doesn't interfere with my standard of living.. its a game and I take it that way..
I buy both the powerball and the mega millions tickets. I buy 10 weeks worth at a time so I don't need to go to town so often. You can't have the dream unless you buy the tickets.
I seldom play, mainly because I just forget to buy a ticket. Maybe I'll do like Sheldon and buy a few in advance....then forget I even have them and only remember to check after the time has run out to collect. I'd be willing to bet $100 that's when I'd have the winning number.
We live in one of the states where the lottery is not legalized; so people in Alabama drive to Tennessee, or whatever neighboring state they are close to, to get their lottery tickets, especially when the prize is really high. We are about a half hour from the Tennessee border, and there are long lines at all the places that sell lottery tickets when the prize gets so high and the sales are outrageous. I would think that our state government would get tired of seeing all of that lottery money going to the surrounding states, and they have talked about opening up Alabama to the lottery; but so far it has not gone through, even though we could use the extra money here. If we did have the lottery, I would probably buy a ticket, although probably not every week. I am still not convinced that the mega-millions type of prizes are real; but I do believe that people actually win the lesser prizes, and that would be what I would focus on.
There are also skeptics here about the lottery and they even post their doubts in social media. But the lotto here is drawn live with tv coverage so it is believable that there are real winners. We buy lotto tickers occasionally and we only buy when the jackpot is substantial - at least more than 30 million pesos. We know of several people who are suspected of winning the lotto jackpot. They moved to live in an unidentified place, deleted their social media accounts and lost contact with their circle. One is a resident in our village, another is a neighbor of my colleague and another used to live near our former residence (in the city). They had the same pattern of going incognito as if they had changed their identity.
Like @Ike Willis I would enjoy giving money away. But I think what I would enjoy more is seeing the faces of family members who expect to get a share but don't. Those who ignore me now would be on my ignore list when it comes to giving money away.
Those "suspected winners", @Corie Henson , are they people that you and your husband know personally, or just people that you heard were supposed to live in the same area as you do ? From what I can see, people DO win, and win pretty good sums of money. Our own @Ike Willis has mentioned his winnings playing the lottery. It is only the Powerball and Mega-millions that might be not real. If you look on the internet as a search parameter for "lottery faked" or something similar, there is a lot of information that speculates that it is a setup. Here is an actual drawing that was on national television, where they had drawn out 3 numbers, and suddenly the fourth number appears on the TV screen, even though that number had not been drawn yet. Of course, as soon as it shows up on the screen, it also then pops out of the bubble of numbers; so many people might have not even noticed that they were posting a number that hadn't been called, and then it came out, proving that the numbers are controlled.
Wife use to play one drawing ($10) each week and sometimes we'd buy ($10) worth of Scratchers, but after not winning decided "enough is enough". Actually, I can win playing a $1 Slot Machine on local casino boat. Don't go on the boat that much, perhaps twice a year, and generally only break even (coming home with the same amount that we took onboard. Generally our gambling limit is $100 each, perhaps a little more.
@Yvonne Smith , I seldom trust any video from YouTube. Anybody could put anything they want on there...it's really not a source of legit info. Anyway, I looked at that video and it was in Serbia! I'm pretty sure ours aren't rigged....there would be too many angry people if that came out.
Once in a while, I'll buy a ticket but not often. I dream about winning the lottery far more often than I buy a ticket. When they talk about the odds, it sounds so crazy to buy tickets, but two people who I knew personally have won millions. A guy in my class during elementary school and high school, and a woman who had been a waitress at a restaurant here in Millinocket. So, by my estimates, my chances of winning millions of dollars in a lottery are greater than my chances of being polled during an election year.