>>Take the lottery. Americans spent $70.15 billion on lottery tickets in 2014 — about $630 for every household in the country.
That just boggles the mind.
At least playing the lottery is entirely voluntary. They won’t throw you in prison if you don’t play, not yet anyway.
I’m on SSDI and a low fixed income and barely make ends meet, but I do *once* in awhile play the lottery. I used to have a friend that was flat out addicted, spending hundreds per week and making not much more than me.
The worst thing is you can go to an indian casino, learn to play hold’em, and have FAR better odds of breaking even or a little profit. But you have no chance at those to make retirement money really like a lottery win.
There's a difference, however, between throwing away $6 on the lottery for the opportunity to dream (as I did Wednesday evening) and throwing away entire paychecks, as many others did, thinking they actually have a chance.
I can't imagine the number of people who awoke Thursday morning with skull-crushing Powerball hangovers when they realized they did not win, just spent hundreds of dollars on worthless pieces of paper, and the bills are still due.
At least governments got some of their tax money back they gave away to a lot of these innumerate folks!
The odds of becoming a lightning victim in the U.S. in any one year is 1 in 700,000.
The odds of winning Powerball® is 292,000,000
As soon as I get hit by lightning; I'll by a PowerFool ticket.