Do you purchase lottery tickets?

No never have.

Sometimes. My husband likes to.

On rare occasion, it’s cheap entertainment.

When the California Super Lotto gets over 20 million, I’ll buy a few chances. Same with PowerBall when it gets over 250 million.

I justify my fun knowing how long the odds are with an estimate of the return being better than the odds. When the chance of winning is one in 13 million, but the present value return is 14 million, I figure it’s time to take a chance.

(My calculations are off the cuff, don’t factor in taxes, or the amount taken off the top to go to schools, but also based on the fact that the number of tickets sold is incremental since the last draw where no one won.)

Not in many years.

It’s negative EV.

May as well give the money to someone who needs it more.

On rare occasion.
I once won $750 in scratch-off, and everything since has been at a net loss.

Cheap dreams.

Just realised the euro millions jackpot tonight is €60 million

Yes, my husband does. If I do, I get too tangled up in plans for how I would spend my winnings. Not productive.

I am in a lottery syndicate at work. We pay £1 a week. I also play the Postcode Lottery. I won about £300 once with a syndicate but I think by now I’m back to negative value.

I think it’s a bit of harmless fun. I enjoy daydreaming about a win

Never

Same as @zenvelo, I’ll buy a chance at the Powerball when it gets to some really obnoxious level. I have great daydreams for a couple of days. That’s worth $3 to me. Not only are the odds for winning outrageous, but I do this after having won a huge school raffle in 2nd grade, then never winning a damn thing ever again; not at the horse tracks, not at the Jai Alai Fronton, the dog tracks, not at the machines or tables at Vegas, not a bloody thing. I could lose a one-horse race. But it’s only a few bucks, so what the hell. And I figure it’s about time. The gods have had their little joke and now it’s time to cut me some slack.

Once in a while when we remember to buy tickets or the amount is unusually high. I usually like to buy it if we are on a road trip somewhere and can come by some small shop off a hwy. For some reason they seem to be the places people win. I don’t think I ever saw a large drawing come from a supermarket. Well correction. There was I think one or two in Florida from a big supermarket chain in Florida.
When its a big number my husband and his co-workers will do a pool.

No. It’s a tax on a poor understanding of maths.

I buy a couple scratchers now and then. I like the Bingo games, more bang for your buck and you get to uncover words. haha
I haven’t bought any lotto tickets for probably the last 5–6 months, it’s an occasional thing. I rarely have purchased the mega lotto tickets, the odds are so astronomically small that I just don’t bother.

I’ve won $20.00 a couple times on a one or two dollar ticket, woo hoo! lol

I play automatically every week with the same numbers that are chosen to be a little more likely to win a larger prize.

Once in blue moon. Most I ever won was $50 – back in 1978.

Back in the States I had a little ceremony for awhile. I’d eat at a Chinese buffet once a week, get my six numbers for the Florida Lottery from the fortune cookie, take it across the street after dinner and get a ticket for $2. I never won a thing, but I like ceremonies. And Chinese buffets. And the idea that in a few days, I could have more money than I’ll ever need. So, it worked for me.

I don’t play regularly, but when I do, it’s for three reasons…1. If I don’t play I can’t possibly win; 2. A good portion of the proceeds, after the 50% dedicated to prizes, goes to open space projects here in the state (including a few local parks I frequent); 3: It makes for a fun fantasy

One ticket about every three years when the jackpot gets so enormous that even though I KNOW I won’t win, the odds are too high, my sense of greed overpowers my sense of rationality.

I did pretty close to winning a huge payout… at least so I thought for about 15 seconds. Many years ago, when I was living in Phoenix, I had purchased two Powerball tickets. When I checked the newspaper on the morning of the drawing, I thought I had a perfect match. Turned out I had somehow mixed up the numbers from my tickets.

Instead of 2 million or whatever it was I won $2,

I took a statistics class in college, so, no.

If you live your life based on statistics alone it doesn’t seem to me
you would have very much fun! I buy scratch offs ever so often
and have won very little on them. Its fun to buy some for someones
birthday that has everything! And when the powerball gets to a big
amount you darn right I play. And then it scares me because I know
how much people change when they win large sums of money and I
don’t want to change like a millionaire with people calling me for $
and always having to watch over your back. What fun is that? So if
I won I would probably give it to my sons who are younger and can
handle all the problems you go thru when you have lots of $.
It would be fun just seeing what being a millionaire feels like!

@MooCows It’s more fun to give someone old scratchers that have been checked and say, “we just wanted to save you the hassle!”

One time a buddy and I were off to the mountains, and stopped for gas and coffee. He bought $4 worth of scratchers out of his change. We won $20 out of them so we got 20 more, which bought us another 15, and then about 5 more. All told it cost us $4 for a half hour of fun.

I don’t, but I’m not opposed to the idea.

Can’t win if you don’t play.

Rarely. It is a tax on fools.

Maybe 10 to 20 dollars total per year. Usually only if there’s a big jackpot and maybe a rare dollar here and there otherwise.

Ya gotta be in it to win it, as they say in the New York Lottery. I’m not into gambling and I try to avoid it (gambling addiction runs in the family – not my generation or my parents but I’m a little hyper-aware of avoiding it).

My husband does.

Very, very rarely. Always on a whim.

If I’m at the store and think about it, sometimes. I have never gone somewhere for the sole purpose of buying a lottery ticket.

Sometimes just for fun.