Before you get caught up in the excitement of “winning the lottery,” consider a few statistics. Brigham Young University math professor Tyler Jarvis made this observation: “The chances of winning the California Lotto Jackpot are approximately one in 18,000,000. If you have to drive 10 miles to buy this ticket, you are three times more likely to be killed in an automobile accident on the way than to win the jackpot.” He added that, if you stood all the losers of this lottery in a line, it would be 6,800 miles long, more than the distance from Manhattan to Tokyo.”
According to another mathematician quoted by The Motley Fool, if you bought 50 tickets per week, you ought to win once every 6,923 years. So, to be due to win anytime soon, you’d have had to start playing around 5000 B.C.
The Gambling Free Tennessee Alliance reported: “If a person bought 100 $1 lottery tickets every week for his entire adult life from age 18 to 75, that $296,400 investment would still only give him less than one chance in 100 of hitting the jackpot.”
The Motley Fool says, “Don’t buy more than occasional tickets for fun.” Or, to quote humorist Fran Lebowitz, “I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not.” Perhaps those dollars you could spend on lottery tickets would bring you closer to your financial goals if you invested them in a good mutual fund.