|
Americo Lopes, a construction worker from Portugal currently living in New Jersey, won the Mega Millions Lottery for $38.5 million about 3 years ago. He chose the lump sum option and was able to walk away with $25 million in cold hard cash.
But there's no happy ending. Americo purchased the winning lottery ticket with money collected from several of his co-workers. When Americo realized THEY had purchased the winning ticket, he tried to keep the fact that THEY won the lottery a secret. He called his boss and made up a story about needing foot surgery and wouldn't be reporting to work for a few weeks. Needless to say, he never went back to work. His co-workers figured something fishy was going on and after a little investigative work, they sued him for their share of the lottery jackpot, $20 million. The co-workers won their civil lawsuit.
Have you ever thought about what you would do if you won the lottery? If you purchased the ticket as part of an office pool would you tell your co-workers? Or would you try to keep it a secret?
Did you know that if you asked most people to choose between "lady luck" and buying a lottery ticket or taking control of their own financial future by saving enough to have a comfortable retirement; most people would say that they would rather play the lottery! If you think that winning the lottery is your only option for a financially secure retirement, you're not alone.
One study in Texas found that a person without a college degree spent an average of $250 per year purchasing lottery tickets. If that same person were to start an IRA or other retirement vehicle that earned a conservative average 4 percent annual return and they contributed $250 per year for 30 years, they would have $15,392 once they reached retirement age. If they did the same thing for 40 years, that number would jump to more than $25,000. Although some would argue that in today's economy there is no way to guarantee that the money would earn 4 percent, there's also no guarantee that it wouldn't earn far more than 4 percent, but all of that aside, the odds of having $15,000 after 30 years are largely in your favor.
If you decide to play the lottery understand that it's strictly for entertainment and not retirement.Check out these Lottery Odds from savings.com.
- How about the classic odds of being struck by lightning? The actual probability of this happening varies from year to year, but as a good estimate, the National Safety Council says between 70 and 120 people a year die in the US by lightning - so let's take 100 as our base. With the US population being approximately 265 million people, that means that the chances of being killed by lightning is roughly 2,650,000 to 1. Not very likely. However you are still 6 to 45 times more likely to die from a lightning strike than you would be to win the lottery.
- Now nobody really wants to die from flesh eating bacteria, and with odds at about 1 million to 1, the chances that you will die that way are pretty slim. Then again, you are 18 to 120 times more likely to die this way than to win the lottery.
- What are the chances that if you're playing golf with a group of four that two of you will get a hole-in-one on the exact same hole? At 17 million to 1, they're better than the chances of you winning the lottery.
- What about dying from a snake bite or bee sting? It probably isn't the way that you imagined how you would leave this earth. You're a whopping 180 to 1,200 times more likely to die from one of these incidents than win the lottery. That's because the probability of dying from a snake bite or bee sting is about 100,000 to 1.
- Now I know that you are not a bad person and you don't imagine finding yourself on death row for a crime you committed anytime soon. Still, it's a lot more likely that you would be legally executed than winning the lottery.
- If none of the above has convinced you to stop playing the lottery, then I'll bring out my favorite lottery fact. If you drive 10 miles to purchase your lottery ticket, it's 3 to 20 times more likely for you to be killed in a car accident along the way than to win the jackpot.
Saving money is not a difficult task (unless you're spending all of your spare cash on lottery tickets). If you have a plan for what you would do if you won the lottery, take a step back and say to yourself, "Just in case I don't win the lottery, what can I do to make sure I'm not totally penniless?" The first step you can take is to stop buying the lottery tickets or severely limit the amount you spend on lottery tickets. If you can't stop playing the numbers you may need to contact Gamblers Anonymous. But, if you're able to follow the example above and save approximately $20 each month and invest in a conservative investment that returns 4%, you should feel better knowing that if you don't have the winning ticket you have money in the bank -- which is a lot better than a dream that never came true.
|
