If you follow this blog then you know I would normally invest any extra $100 into my savings portfolio but I have a unique opportunity to disprove a popular way of making money, Lottery Tickets.

Personally, I’m not a fan of Lottery Tickets or the lesser form, Scratch-It Tickets. I go by the understandable philosophy the HOUSE ALWAYS WIN. However I can’t just say Lottery Tickets are dumb, I have to prove it.

So I bought $100 of Lottery Tickets

It’s one of the funniest feelings in the world to walk into a Gas Station (Liquor Store/Gas Station for me) and lay down a crisp $100 bill to say “I want $100 worth of Lottery Tickets!”. I assume his opinion of me was that of a Lottery Addict getting his next fix, but I started grinning like a 5-year-old buying a box of Cracker Jacks hoping to get the secret decoder ring!

He asked me “what kind?”

Crap there are more than one? Well apparently yes. There were Mega Millions, Powerball, and Scratch-Its. Each of these are considered “Lottery Tickets” and there are tons of them!

To diversified my Lottery Ticket selection and then bought all of them.

I ended up getting a wide assortment of Lottery Options. I bought $99 worth of Scratch It Tickets and one Mega Millions Ticket. I figured if I was going to win the Mega Millions, one ticket would just be as good as 100 of them if I factored odds. My thought was that I’d win more with Scratch-Its than a Powerball/Mega Millions because the odds were better.

I bought (2) $20 Scratch Its, (2) $10 Scratch Its, (4) $5 Scratch Its, (5) $3 Scratch Its and (2) $2 Scratch its along with a (1) $1 Mega Millions Lottery Ticket.

Here’s what $100 worth of Lottery Tickets looks like.

Leaving the Gas Station, I felt like a kid escaping a toy store with a stash of loot. I knew the odds were against me, but damn it I thought “I COULD ACTUALLY WIN SOMETHING HERE”.

I should say that the lottery is a game of luck. There is absolutely NO skill with these games. There are people that say you can tilt the odds in your favor with different strategies. I’m sorry, I don’t believe you. The lottery is like burning your money. It’s fun to do, but you’re left with nothing in the end.

Lottery Tickets are Hella Confusing

Here’s the thing, I remember the last time I did a Scratch-It Ticket when I was 10 years old, all I had to do was scratch a ticket and it told me whether I won or not. Nowadays, there are all kinds, like Bingo and Crossword Scratch-Its that take forever and are very confusing to see whether you won or not. Even then you’re not entirely sure. After two hours of scratching tickets, I discovered I won $128. That’s freaking incredible. Yet when I turned in the tickets, I ended up actually winning $158 because one ticket had a secret 2x bonus.

WTF! These should be simple. I’ll take the extra $30 but we should really be upfront and simple about these things.

I could have easily just bought the ticket and had the gas station clerk just scan the ticket to see if I won. I discovered there really is no reason to scratch them yourself. The games are entertaining to play, but in reality, they have no purpose. Once the ticket is bought, you can scan it and learn if you win or lose without ever “playing” the game.

So I ended up winning $158

I was frankly shocked and didn’t expect to win anything. I was planning on sharing this experience to say Lottery Tickets will always lose. I’m happy I won $158 dollars but I could have just easily lost everything.

Here are the break down of the Lottery Tickets:

Lottery Ticket Winning Amounts

It appears what you win is directly proportional to the amount you spend on the ticket. That is kind of scary, you want to win big, you have to gamble big. I won most of my money from two $20 tickets. The only exception was the $3 ticket that won 2000% of it’s ticket price at $60.

What Happens if You Invest that $158

Since Wallet Squirrel is all about earning extra money and investing it, let’s see what would happen over 20 years if you invested that $158 in dividend stocks. Let’s assume 7% Market Average with a 3% dividend.

*UPDATE*

There are really two types of lottery games. There are the scratch it tickets that I did before and the Powerball/Mega Millions that people have to guess 6 numbers. I wanted to update this blog post by spending $100 on Powerball/Mega Millions tickets.

I Also Bought $100 in Mega Millions Tickets

Since this is an update to this post, I just bought these tickets from the gas station on Thursday when the Mega Millions was at 1 BILLION dollars. Of course, that’s the annuity and not the lump sum. It would be more around $337 million if it was the lump sum. Still though, a lot of money.

So I laid down another crisp $100 bill (which the cashier immediately checked if it was legit, it was) and bought my Mega Millions tickets. Since it’s $2 per ticket, I bought 50 tickets in total. I was asked if I wanted “power play” which doubles your prize if you win (except the jackpot), and I choose “no”. My goal was the 1 BILLION jackpot and “power play” always feels more like an upsell.

I expected 50 individual tickets, but the machine lets you buy $20 worth of tickets at a time, so the cashier had to select 10 random tickets at a time. I felt bad for the dude to keep pressing the buttons, but this is what 50 Mega Millions tickets look like.

After the drawing, I went through each ticket and circled all the winning numbers “15 23 53 65 70 – 7”. They say you have a 1 in 25 chance of winning, but when you select random, I’m not sure those odds are accurate. Out of 50 sets of numbers, I only won once and it was because I had the correct “power ball” number “7”. So because I had the “power ball” number I won $4. Won isn’t the correct word though because I technically lost $96 in total.

Conclusion

I will admit that Scratch-Its and Lottery Tickets are a way to earn money, but it’s very rare. You’re more likely to be pranked by a friend with a fake lottery ticket, than the odds of actually winning. Most people just continue to buy lottery tickets because of the expression “You can’t win if you don’t play”. Technically true, but the odds are astronomically stacked against you.

Scratch-It tickets seemed to be much better in this little experiment. Your odds are so little that it may not be worth it except for the fun to think about winning because you’ll likely not win. You’re WAY better off investing that $100.

Wallet Squirrel

Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!

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