I've been meaning to ask this question for a while but never get around to it. Does anyone play the state lottery? I ask because I honestly don't know any younger folks that do... I only know older people that do. If you do play, what do prefer... drawings or scratch off tickets? Has anyone ever won the lottery, even a small amount?

Don't play, waste of money.  1$ a day every day for the rest of your life is like 20,000$, which if you put 1$ away every day for the rest of you're life in any sort of investment plan would yield way more than 20,000$ by the time you decide to withdraw it.  Planning ahead > random chance.  Sure it would be nice to win that 350 million dollar jackpot, and SOMEONE has to win it, eventually, but the odds are so far against you that it's just really not feasible .

I play once or twice a year, only when the jackpot is really huge.  I would say my yearly lottery expenses are in the neighborhood of less than $5.  jb is right, it's just not worth bothering with.

My 401(k) Retirement Savings Account is already close enough to playing the lottery, if you count how vulnerable the stock markets and the economy are these days... 

Even with the bulk if it being in conservative Bonds and Cash rather than Stocks, it's barely treading water and breaking even, while a few years ago the stocks were making like 17% average return when the economy was still in upswing...

I don't purchase any lottery tickets, but every once in a while I will get a birthday card or a Christmas stocking with a few scratch tickets in it. When I was younger I won $2,000 on a one dollar ticket that my grandmother bought me. When I was young, this was an absolute ton of money - I was only about 12 or so. I gave $300 to my grandmother, put $1,600 in the bank and then kept $100 for myself. I bought a random SNES game and lots of candy. I was a happy kid.

Now, my birthday was last month, and I have a few winning scratch tickets totaling $25. I am trying to decide if I want to try to win more money or if I should just cash them and use that money for Rockman 9 OST.

I don't play the lottery myself, I don't think that gamble is really worth it. Like a lot of things (smoking, chewing) I don't even want to start so I avoid it.

I hate it when people say things like this. Who actually would put a dollar a day in the bank? Nobody.

Absolutely agree. Waste of money.

Ha, true story... I still look at my shares every day like I do my fantasy baseball and football teams, even against my better judgement. But we're still young enough that we'll be fine over the long term, save a huge calamity like the absolute destruction of our entire banking system. *knock on wood*

In any case, I couldn't play if I wanted to: it is illegal in the state of Alabama. And while I'm not convinced it should be *illegal,* I'm still glad we have none for people to waste their money on. (Except for those who commute to Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida for tickets...) If you could convince me we'd have proper administration of the game in this state, I'd at least be open to it. Buuuut things being the way they are here, it would be a tough sell.

In Canada, we don't get lotteries as big as the Powerball lotteries sometimes get in the States, but ours are tax free when they are doled out.  (I think you guys get dinged for like pretty much half of whatever you win, right?)  The two big ones (the 6/49 and Super 7) usually start out at 2 - 2.5 million, and when it gets to about 30-40 million is when it becomes a big deal and tv stations do news reports on them and such.  Those big lotteries usually end up getting won by people in work pools so it gets divvy-ed up between about 15-20 people.  I only play when it's the big amounts, and put in about 10 dollars.

As for scratch tickets, my dad usually buys a special $20 x-mas pack for the 5 of us in the family and Christmas day after all the presents are done, we'll scratch em all up usually only getting back about $10 - 20 (if we're lucky) on the $100 purchase... kinda lame, but eh it's Christmas.

Yes...

(I answered two questions there, by the way; to elaborate on the second one, the most I ever won was twenty bucks on a scratchoff)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/nyregion/22super.html

I've never played the lottery.  One reason is the odds.  The other reason is that I want no part of something also known as a poor tax.  But I think I understand the appeal of the lottery.  When life is workaday and dreary and painfully unremarkable, lottery tickets offer hope, even if it's false hope.

Oh yes, more people are addicted to False Hopes than Cocaine.