Gambling and the Lottery

I think gambling is fun and exciting especially at a really nice casino. While some people may like to go to a movie and spend $10, I'd rather go to a casino and use it to gamble. BUT entertainment is all gambling is good for. It is most certainly NOT a way to get rich, it is a way of becoming broke. Gambling can be addicting and can destroy your finances. A casino can eat your cash fast but the lottery is even worse. It is the absolute worst place you can spend your money. At least in roulette if you put your money on black or red, you have a 47% chance of doubling it (not saying I recommend it). The lottery has drastically worst odds and basically becomes a tax on the poor and people that can't do math. I can guarantee that the majority of millionaires do not play the lottery. Now you might say, "that's because they don't need too play the lottery because they already have a lot of money." I say that they became millionaires because they stayed away from the lottery! Let's play out a scenario where instead of wasting your money playing the lottery, you put it in a good growth stock mutual fund...

Let's say the average person that plays the lottery spends $30 a month, that's $360 a year. They have about a 1 in 13,983,816 chance of hitting the jackpot and becoming a millionaire. If instead of using the money on the lottery, you put it in a good growth stock mutual fund your whole working life (from age 20 to age 70) you will have $1,183,467.69 EVERY TIME!!! Why give your hard earned money away to the government when instead you could literally become a millionaire with that money?

Welcome to the wonderful world of mathematics! This is a real world application that every non-math minded person can understand.

--A Future Millionaire