Down to my last dollar!

No chance. Ok, extremely slim chance. Thanks for the advice I’ve received from many, but I won’t be ‘investing’ my last dollar on the lottery. Why not? Well, despite the fact that 1/3 of Americans think that winning the lottery is the only way become financially secure in life, you actually have much more chance of being hit by lightning, than being singled out by ‘the fickle finger of fate.’

If you don’t believe me, check out your odds here.

I’m not saying don’t, but…

Probably not. Cardsharps use the laws of probability to increase their chances of winning and you can use the same tools with the lottery/lotto. It turns out that winning the lottery is not as random as we might imagine.If you study the winning numbers of any particular lottery over time (quite a long time), you’ll find that certain numbers come up more often than others do. Moreover, some numbers come up less often than others (step forwards our fickle friend, the number thirteen).

This article, using the UK’s Lotto as a basis, outlines the numbers drawn most often. It also points out that whatever you do, your chances of winning a significant amount are still small to negligible. (As an aside, if you’ve read the book or seen the movie ‘A Beautiful Mind’, you’ll know that is based on the life and work of John Nash, who popularised (and won a Nobel Prize for his work on) Game Theory. If you haven’t done either of these things, you probably should.) 

Being down to your last dollar means different things to different people. You might adjust your family budget when you check this and find out what being down to your last dollar means in some parts of the world. For instance, you’ll be amazed by what $350 means to a family of four in rural Bangladesh.