Lottery Fun....

As I often do, this morning I stopped by the gas station to fill up the car. At the cash register, I had to wait in line behind the lotto crowd.


I am amazed that otherwise sensible, ordinary, hard working men and women would stand in line to throw money away. They could have handed it to me out in the parking lot and saved themselves the time and energy of walking all the way into the QT and waiting in line. I’m just sayin’………

The appeal of the lottery escapes me entirely. It is the ultimate impulse buy. For multitudes, it is an irresistible Siren Song. For the managers of the lottery it is a never ending cash cow.

I was thinking about the sheer volume of potential combinations of numbers that could come up and had to get online and see what the odds are. According to the official Georgia Lottery website, the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 175,711,536. If you buy 2 tickets, you don’t reduce the odds by half, as some people think. The actual odds in that case are 2 in 175,711,536. The odds of winning the Powerball Grand Prize are 1 in 195,249,054. The odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 280,000.

If you take that $1 you spend on the lottery and stick it in a jar, the probability of having $52 at the end of the year is 100%.

Conclusion, the best way to guarantee winning at the lotto is to save the money instead. Now THAT’S what I call FUN!