In a recent post about the lottery, one of the reason I gave for including the lottery as a investment policy was:
" The lottery should be used as a one-time investment strategy, if you invest enough money in certain lottery games with lots of small cash prizes, you have a good chance at some point of making more money than you had originally invested. The reason why the lottery is such a bad investment is that people do not have the ability to stop once they are winning money. If you simply stop spending money once you are ahead you will make a good one time return. "
I decided to test this theory on one of the newest lottery scratch tickets in my home state of Massachusetts http://www.masslottery.com/games/igodds/800MilSpectacular2006_odds.htm. There is nothing wrong with buying the occasional lottery ticket, but since lottery tickets can be such an impulsive purchase it can be easy to ignore common sense and go over board on a purchase where you are likely to lose money.
Here are some facts about the Massachusetts State Lottery "800 Million Spectacular Scratch Ticket" that sells for $10.00.
Odds of winning on one ticket 27 %
Projected Net Loss on investment -16%
Likely-hood that you will get a positive return after 5 Tickets 32%
In a recent post about the lottery, one of the reason I gave for including the lottery as a investment policy was:
" The lottery should be used as a one-time investment strategy, if you invest enough money in certain lottery games with lots of small cash prizes, you have a good chance at some point of making more money than you had originally invested. The reason why the lottery is such a bad investment is that people do not have the ability to stop once they are winning money. If you simply stop spending money once you are ahead you will make a good one time return. "
I decided to test this theory on one of the newest lottery scratch tickets in my home state of Massachusetts http://www.masslottery.com/games/igodds/800MilSpectacular2006_odds.htm. There is nothing wrong with buying the occasional lottery ticket, but since lottery tickets can be such an impulsive purchase it can be easy to ignore common sense and go over board on a purchase where you are likely to lose money.
Here are some facts about the Massachusetts State Lottery "800 Million Spectacular Scratch Ticket" that sells for $10.00.
Odds of winning on one ticket 27 %
Projected Net Loss on investment -16%
Likely-hood that you will get a positive return after 5 Tickets 32%