Is the Lottery a Lazy Way to Get Rich?

Hmm...A ticket for a chance to win millions upon millions of cold hard cash...seems like the ultimate lazy method to becoming rich. I mean all you do is purchase a little ticket, then sit on back and if you’re lucky enough, get a HUGE deposit straight into your bank account. Talk about minimizing effort and maximizing results, right? Doesn’t take much effort to buy a ticket and the results? Well being a millionaire is certainly putting it to the max!

Gambling your money in the lottery no doubt appears like an easy peasy lemon squeezy way to land yourself in riche. Heck, you can retire the day you win the lottery, never having to work another goddamn day in your life, never having to schlep 9 to 5 for a belligerent boss, never having to even get off your freaking couch. Just relax all day and do whatever the hell you want, whatever you’re in the mood for -- no obligations, no work loads, no assignments, no due dates.

You choose what to do and when to do it. You make your own schedule and don’t have to get anything done within a certain time frame assigned to you.

Instant retirement. Instant financial success. The dream come true.

“If you’re lucky enough” though. See, luck is a huge factor in determining your success with the lottery. And let me tell you straight up: Luck is NOT on your side.

I mean you thought finding a shiny Pokemon was rare. Well, you don’t need even a *fraction* of the amount of luck to find a shiny Pokemon as you do to win the lottery.

 Chances are, when you choose to buy a lottery ticket, you’ll just be wasting money. Point blank. You’ll be making yourself more poor in hopes of getting rich, in reality.

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See, despite how tempting it may be to look at the jackpot number and imagine yourself having hundreds of millions of dollars, the fact of the matter is, you might as well flush the money you’d spend on a lottery ticket down the toilet because you ain’t gonna win shit!

I mean, hypothetically, yes, there’s a chance, a *slight* chance that the MEGA MILLIONS could be yours, but the total likelihood of even seeing a single cent, yet alone a whopping heap of cash as a return on investment are jack diddly squat.

The only heap you’ll end up with is the old receipts of your tickets ,piling up in your junk papers upon that mess in your room, you lazy bastard.

And look, I ain’t about to write up this whole article to tell you “You can’t win the lottery so work hard to earn your money instead.”  No. That would entirely defeat the purpose behind the philosophy of this blog and everything we stand for here. We’re all about being lazy and getting away with it here.

What I am saying though is that if you do indeed want to be lazy and minimize effort and maximize results with your money, there’s a way to do that. It just so happens NOT to be in purchasing lottery tickets.

There are ways to get your money to earn you *even more* money. It’s just not in banking your luck to win the multi-million jackpot.

Now I’ll be frank and tell you straight up that the money you earn *passively* ain’t gonna make you rich quick. But it can make you rich...slowly. Embrace your inner sloth and get rich slowly.

Be patient with your finances. It pays off. Literally.

Anyway, before we get into some of the suggested methods of how to make money with your money, let’s first look at why its most certainly NOT buying lottery tickets. And without further ado, let’s dive...right into it!












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The Odds Are Slim

You have such a low chance of winning the lottery that spending your money on a ticket just ain’t worth it. I mean, we’re talking about a fraction of a fraction of a fraction chance of winning. Microscopic numbers here. Teeny tiny numerals.

Let’s do a bit of the math.

Statistically speaking, in a typical pick 6 number lottery, your odds of winning are roughly 1 in 14 million. One in 14 million. Let that sink in. Like holy shit. Have you ever achieved *anything* with that type of odds?

No, no, you haven’t. You probably won’t ever. As matter of fact, I’m confident enough to say you *won’t* ever. Period. It’s just that slim of a chance.

And sure, the Avengers managed to save the universe from Thanos whipping out half the population with such odds, but face it, we’re not living in the Marvel cinematic universe. We’re living in reality.

To put this all in perspective, you statistically have a higher chance of  Dating a super model (1 in 88,000), winning an Oscar 91 in 11,500), or even getting struck by freaking lightning (1 in 10million) than you do of picking the right numbers for the jackpot.

Heck, you probably have a better chance of finding a hundred dollar bill on the chance every single day for the rest of your life than actually winning the lottery. Of course, I don’t have to exact numbers of something like this to be fair, but you get the point. Your probability of winning is so microscopically low that it’s pretty much impossible at worst or laughable at best.

The numbers speak for themselves. You can hope, wish, and pray as hard and as much as you want. You can perform your weird little rituals like wearing your old Nirvana t-shirt inside out while doing the floss dance. But fact of the matter is, the odds are ridden against you. 

And winning has nothing to do with your knowledge, expertise, or skill. It’s fully and completely based on luck. No strategy Just a roll of a die. (one of the reason I hate playing the game Monopoly, but I digress) A 14 million sided die at that!

One in 14 million. Seriously.

I mean, you might as well, write off the money you spend on a lottery ticket as “lost money” at that point. You ain’t getting it back and you certainly ain’t winning. 

Hate to break your dreams, Mr. Lucky, but you ain’t *that* lucky. I mean you can hang as many rabbit foots in your room as you want. You can carry as many 4 leaf clovers in your pocket as you want (speaking of which you have a higher chance of finding enough 4-leaf clovers to stuff a pillow than you do of winning the lottery, as the odds are 1 in 10,000). You can knock on wood performing the drum solo of Moby Dick by Led Zeppelin live version (about an hour song). It doesn’t matter, you still ain’t winning.

And let’s entertain the idea that maybe these superstitious type rituals *do* actually provide some sort of “boost” to your luck. Well even if it doubled your luck, even if it tripled, heck even if it you did something that made you *a hundred times* more lucky, you’d  STILL be looking at a fraction of a fraction of a fraction chance of winning.
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I mean when we say the odds are against you, I ain’t talking about  picking one card out of a deck of 52 type of “odds against you”. I’m talking picking one grain of sand in an entire sandbox type of odds against you.

And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “Well what about scratch offs??”

I’ll tell you about scratch offs though. Still ain’t worth it. There. End of discussion.

Alright, but let’s get into it.

Now, scratch off tickets usually have a win rate between 3-30%. The odds are waaayy better in your favor compared to the number draw for sure. But you gotta keep in mind that your “winnings” more likely than not are going to be an amount *less than* what you paid for the scratch off ticket. You’re at a loss, a negative ROI (Return On Investment). You could pay $30 for your scratch off, and quote on quote “win $2. Well that just sets you back $28.

Of course, you could actually profit as well, tenfold. You could win maybe even a couple thousand dollars from that single scratch off ticket alone. But again, *odds are against you*. You’re likely to wind up LOSING money more so than gaining any sort of profit.

It’s a total gamble, really. And gambling is a fool’s game. A smart man’s game is strategic. We’ll get to some smart strategies for your money in a sec, but first I want to cover an important point...











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Rich People Don’t Buy Lottery Tickets.

It’s true. Lottery tickets exploit the poor and middle class by enticing them with the hopes of instant riches. Lottery tickets literally  bring in BILLIONS of dollars to the government every year. It’s almost like a sort of “secret tax” that only the poor and middle class pay. Of course, it’s totally optional to pay this tax, the rich have found out, as they do with most other taxes.

Rich people are always looking for ways to make more money from their money. They’re constantly calculating where to put their money in order to yield the largest return in their investment.

Now don’t you think that if the lottery was a profitable endeavor, all these rich investors would be hoarding up as many lottery tickets as possible? 

But that’s not the case. That’s not the case at all. Rich people don’t put money into the lottery because they know it won’t bring them any profit.

The jackpot of the lottery sort of a false incentive to get you to pay more taxes. I mean think about, what is a tax? A portion of money you earn that’s given directly to the government, without any sort of return.

Well, with the fractional numbers we talked about earlier regarding your chances of winning said jackpot, you’re, as we mentioned, flushing your money down the toilet, that is, giving it to the government, and thus paying a tax.

Really fucked up if you think about it. They (the government) sell you the idea that you too could be rich to get you to pay them *even more* money (for a lottery ticket) on top of the ridiculous amount of money that they already steal from your hard earned  paycheck. All while allocating all that money directly to tax cuts for the wealthy and upper class.

So yeah, since the lottery is basically a tax disguised as a fun little game, and the rich like to avoid taxes as much as possible, they do NOT buy lottery tickets.

And you may be thinking, well wait a minute! The people who WON the lottery ended up *becoming* rich. And while that much is true, there’s always a catch to something good, isn’t there? Let’s dive deeper.










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Lottery Winners Usually End Up Broke

70%. Seventy freaking percent of lottery winners wind up filing for bankruptcy at some point. That’s not just a majority. That’s an *overwhelming* majority.

People that win the lottery blow their riches away more often than not.  They’re given so much money they just don’t know how to handle it all.

Fact of the matter is, if you’re not financially savvy while poor, you won’t magically become financially savvy if you’re handed a huge jackpot to spend.

And spend is what people tend to do with the money. They’re not smart about it. They don’t invest it. They spend it. They purchase luxury items, like a fancy car, champagne, and a yacht.

It all comes down to this consumer-driven culture that perpetuates buying the latest and greatest. Of course, when you *spend* money, you lose it and when you invest money, well you gain even more of it.

The idea of “success” in this consumer heavy culture in which we live in is to have a lot of “stuff”. The more stuff you have, and the fancier that stuff is, the more successful you are.

But the way I see success is having happiness and freedom. 

The lottery ticket could very well be your ticket to happiness and freedom; it can give you the ability to do what you want, pay the bills, and not have to once worry “how am I going to afford this?”

But instead of living comfortably with “just enough”, because of this consumer brainwashing, people see their jackpot winnings as the the ultimate shopping spree -- the opportunity to get more stuff!

They’ll go out and spend every last dollar they had faster than you can read the winning lotto numbers out loud. It’s kind of sad, really.

Furthermore, lottery winners are statistically highly likely to be robbed, kidnapped, and even murdered.

The rewards aren’t worth it, man. I mean I don’t know about you but I prefer NOT to be a target of criminals.










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​Earn your wealth. Don’t hope for it.

The lottery offers nothing but false hope and wishful thinking. You’re not *actually* going to win that crazy amount of cash. It’s practically as much of  a fantasy as finding a unicorn in the forest. And even if you did win, be honest with yourself, would you really even know what to do with it?

If your answer is something along the lines of “I’d buy (blank) -- a luxury car, a big house, my own skating rink, etc. then you’ll probably be just another statistic that ends up bankrupt in a few months, maybe a few years down the road at best.

If your answer, on the other hand, is something like “pay off my (blank) --- student loans, mortgage, etc or “invest in Bitcoin, Amazon, and Tesla” then you might fall under that 30% category of people that win the lottery that DON’T end up bankrupt. A rare breed indeed.

But if you’re the type of person to say you’d either pay off debt or invest with your lottery winnings, then you’re probably not the type of person to purchase a ticket in the first place, because you realize just how bad of an investment it really is.

And by the way, notice I said “earn” your wealth. I didn’t say try for it. I didn't say work hard for it. I said earn it.

You can earn your wealth nice and slow. Invest in stocks. Invest in crypto. Heck, even put it in a savings account for crying out loud! The interest rate ain’t nothing to write home about, but at least you’ll be accumulating wealth rather than digging yourself deeper into debt.

A lottery ticket, statistically speaking is more likely to burn a hole in your pocket than it is to fill your wallet. And that’s including if you win, because as we covered, most lottery winners end up broke shortly after collecting their prize.

The point is, you want to do things that actually allow your money to make you *more* money. I mean theoretically, that’s indeed why you purchase a lottery ticket in the first place. You’re *hoping* that the little money you spend can turn into a large sum of cash. You’re in a sense “investing” with the intent to make profit.

What happens though is you wind up just spending this money or paying a “tax” directly to the government. It doesn’t net you any value or meaningful returns, other than an aching feeling that you “didn’t win this time.”

“But maybe next time,” you’ll think to yourself. Maybe next time I *could* win. Then what do you know? You don’t win the next time or the time after that or the hundredth and seventh time after that either. You get stuck in this perpetual loop of endless hope, which never grants satisfaction.

I mean, if you add up all the money you spend on lottery tickets, you’d probably have quite a sack of change, of which *could have* not only been kept but also have been gaining interest in the stock market.

Yeah, sure, investments like stocks and even crypto may not seem as cool as winning the multi-mega-million jackpot overnight, but the fact of the matter is, you can “win” a jackpot *slowly* over time.

You can earn your way to riches *eventually*. And that’s the way a true procrasitn8r likes to do it, eventually.  Instead of putting a couple dollars into the purchase of a lottery ticket in *hopes* that it will make you rich, you can instead put that money into an investment or savings account and take the slow n steady yet *guaranteed* path to success.

One dollar. One step. At. A. Time.






If you’re going to participate in the Lottery, keep it recreational.

Look, if after reading my entire piece here you’re still in the mode of “fuck it, I’m buying a lottery ticket”, then do so as a sort of fun thing to do, not an actual hope that you’re gonna get rich from it.

I mean I suppose if you see it as some sort of hobby, that’s fine. Go ahead and buy whatever kind of lottery ticket you fancy. As long as you keep it a hobby and don’t turn it into an addiction. There’s a fine line.

It should be something recreational. 

You could be addicted to the “thrill of luck”. Gambling is a real addiction. You’ll get trapped into the mode of thinking “I gotta win. I just gotta.” And will keep on buying chances to win, only to wind up losing in the end.

Purchase a lottery ticket with the mindset that you are going to LOSE.

After all, it’s better to be pleasantly surprised than it is to be severely disappointed.








Take it easy,

​N8

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