I wrote about this a while back (link as my name in this comment). If you bought 1 $1 lottery ticket per week, all year long, for 20 years… you would be giving up $1,805 (assuming a 5% return). $1 doesn’t seem like much, but it adds up. And I would say most gamblers play more than $1 per ticket.

Don’t even get me started on how the lottery doesn’t really help schools either…

[...] Dollar Plan: Do you gamble? No, I don’t. I’ve never been lucky in this respect, so I figure why change that [...]

But I keep it controlled and for fun. I like to play poker with the guys… $10-20 buy-ins are standard. No one gets rich, and no one goes broke. Add a couple drinks and some snacks and you got a cheap night of entertainment.

I also do Fantasy Baseball, which we do at $20 per person. When you have a 12 tram league and pay out 3 places, the winner can egt ober $150 which is a nice payday. BUt it takes all season to win! The time/money factor here is incredibly inexpensive! And worth every penny.

I don’t ever really expect to win, but you never know, maybe one day it will be a dollar well spent.

If poker truly were gambling for me, I’d probably have a long-term profit of $0 (not counting rakes). But my return on invested capital last year was 90%, for a couple of hours work each month. Better than my stock portfolio’s doing.