The "Wealthy" Barber

I saw a local news story a little while ago about a 70 year-old barber winning a $32 million lottery jackpot. Apparently he and one of his customers had been playing the lottery together for 35 years.

My first thought was: wow, I bet he wished he had won the lottery 35 years ago instead…

My second thought was: wow, how many people are out there wasting their money playing the lottery for 35 years and not winning?

Playing the lottery is an attractive thing in that anyone, at any time, can win it big. It’s the great equalizer; the great hope; the great fraud… I find it sad really, the false hope that these lotteries generate.

There’s even a whole industry built around "helping" you improve your odds of winning the lottery. Whether it’s magic mathematical systems or divine inspiration, there are hundreds of web sites willing to take your money in order to let the government take your money. For example, one system I saw boasts:

"Win more than every 8 out of 10 times – guaranteed"
"The secret to real lotto system winning success that no other lottery system tells you about."
"Discover the lotto winning solution that really works!"

Brutal! They even offer an affiliate program to ensure that they have an army of people producing "unbiased" testimonials to drown out unhappy customers.

Bottom line, there are only 3 groups getting rich off of lotteries:

• The government (who takes half the ticket price)
• The scam-artists who sell these magic "systems" to "help" you win
• The store clerks who steal their customer’s winning tickets

The odds of winning the grand prize in your lifetime is, at best, something like 1 in 4,000 (1 in 14,000,000 x 35 years x 52 weeks x twice a week) – obviously it depends on which lottery you play. By the way, the odds of being struck by lightning in your lifetime is around 1 in 5,000. Hmm…

If the barber and his friend had invested the $3 they spent twice a week, for 35 years, adjusted for inflation, it could have been worth about $35,000 today. Obviously $32 million is much better, but for the 99.975% of people that will never win the jackpot in their lifetime, $35,000 is better than zero.

In fact, if you invest just $30 a week for 35 years (like some people spend on lottery tickets), you could have a pretty good retirement nest egg of something like $175,000+.

So, how do you win at the lottery? You don’t play…

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