Ten Statistical Facts Which Will Make You Never Want to Play the Lottery Again

When I turned 18, I bought a few scratch off tickets for the sole fact that I was finally legally able to do so. It’s never been much of an interest to me since it’s a losing proposition. Out of the about $10 I’ve probably put into the system I’ve gotten $2.00 back out. It’s amazing that anyone would play these games for any other reason than just for kicks. Here are ten different reasons that you should never buy a lottery or scratch off ticket.

1. When the mafia was running numbers, they were actually offering substantially better odds than what the government does. Imagine how much less bad of a deal it would be if private companies could actually form their own lotteries.

2. You are actually 16 times more likely to get killed in a car accident on the way to purchase your lottery ticket than you are to actually win with the lottery ticket you buy there!

3. Statistically, you will be struck by lightning 5,000 times before you ever win the lottery during your life.

4. If you buy more lottery tickets, you’re not that much more likely to win. Until you start purchasing thousands of tickets, your odds don’t go up that much at all.

5. If you put $20 a month into buying lottery tickets from age 25 to 65, you’ll likely come out with next to nothing. If you instead put that into a mutual fund, you would have $93,626.41, after taxes!

6. If every single person on the planet had purchase a power ball ticket during any one week, only 44 of them would win the lottery. At least it’d make some small child in a third world country happy for a while!

7. If you put $10,000 a week into playing the lottery, it would take you on average 2,809 years to win.

8. You are over 8000 times more likely to be murdered than playing the lottery. You’re probably more likely to be murdered on the way to purchase you’re lottery ticket than you are to actually win it!

9. You are 213 times more likely to die in your bathtub than you are to win the lottery and 146 times more likely to die of a fireworks accident than you are to win the lottery.

10. Only a fraction of the money that individuals put into the lottery is ever used to pay winnings. A large portion of it goes back to the government to spend however they please.