The Lottery - Luxury or investment?

gax23

Hi all,

Here's a bit of a dilemma. Many of us, I'm sure, play the lottery. Assuming you enter both the Wednesday and Saturday draws, this costs around £9 a month. Now, some may argue that this is an unnecessary luxury expenditure, but what if you were to cancel the subscription and your numbers came up the next week? You even have quite good odds of getting the odd tenner here and there, so is the lottery more of a high risk investment than a luxury? How many of you DFWs still play the lottery?

izzybusy23

gax23 wrote: »

Hi all,

Here's a bit of a dilemma. Many of us, I'm sure, play the lottery. Assuming you enter both the Wednesday and Saturday draws, this costs around £9 a month. Now, some may argue that this is an unnecessary luxury expenditure, but what if you were to cancel the subscription and your numbers came up the next week? You even have quite good odds of getting the odd tenner here and there, so is the lottery more of a high risk investment than a luxury? How many of you DFWs still play the lottery?

My DH plays it religiously every week, both Weds and Sat and sometimes the euromillions on a friday. He has stuck to the same six numbers for years now and can't bear not to do it... just in case.

He stopped smoking in December, so I cant begrudge him £4.50 a week when fags used to cost £25+ I guess.

Edited to say, I see it as an investment to keep his sanity!

MissEyre

I'm in a syndicate at work which costs a couple of pounds a week, and when I'm having a rubbish week, I buy a lucky dip if I can afford it-certainly don't see it as an investment, more of a daydreaming 'what would I do if I won' ticket. For the small amount of money it costs me, it gives me a chance to dream-I just keep thinking 'If Charlie Bucket got that golden ticket, there's a chance for everyone!' :rotfl:

MonkeySaving?

Neither, it's a tax for the stupid

Burlesque_Babe

It's a luxury.

If you add up all the £1's spent each week and then deduct the 'odd £10' here and there, the chances are you will have spent more than you've won.

The odds of winning the jackpot are nearly 14 million to 1 and 76 million to 1 for the Euromillions. The odds of winning any prize - 54/1.

Numpty_Monkey

MonkeySaving? wrote: »

Neither, it's a tax for the stupid

more a tax for the gulible dreamer,
might have a lucky dip if its a double roll over, probably gonna have a line on the euro one this friday:eek:

I probably spend less than £10 a year on it and not won a thing for a few years,

a definate luxuary

Numpty_Monkey

ps, just think if a DFW'r won on Friday what would their sig look like

oopalah

£104.00 per year? Definitely a luxury I can't afford. Maybe I'll do it when I'm debt free.

Billy_two_speakers

If you buy a ticket you have 1 in 44 million to one chance in winning

if you buy two and the same number appears on both lines you still have a 1 in 44 million chance of winning :cool:

The only way to inprove your odds is to make sure if you have more than two lines all the numbers are different

The maths experts from a uni that won after 4 years did it by putting all the numbers in a hat, picking them, when they ran out of numbers they put them all back in the hat and started picking again

http://www.mansized.co.uk/talk/thread.phtml/thread4998/

as Camalot said
"the odds against winning were "drastically" reduced "

what got me is they won all that money and one went off to make soap ?