19 April 2016

Winning the lottery; an awesome gig if you can swing it

| Alexandra Craig
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A lucky Canberran walked away with one million dollars last week after taking a ticket in Wednesday’s Lotto draw. The winning ticket made a hatrick for Evatt Newsagency with three winning tickets being sold there in the last six months.

Hands up who enters the lottery regularly? Semi regularly? Only when given a lottery ticket in a birthday card?

Recently I was determined that I would take a ticket in the lottery every single week with a spend of around $15 each time. I only ended up taking a ticket for about three weeks and then completely forgot about it, until I started writing this piece.

I had gotten curious about what you would be better off doing financially; saving the $15 every single week for the rest of my life, or putting it towards a lottery ticket. I put this to crazy intelligent genius man Dr Karl Kruszelnicki via Twitter. Dr Karl came back telling me that overall, I’d probably end up in around about the same position. So I decided that if I’m going to end up the same, I might as well put the $15 to lottery tickets because saving $15 a week won’t give me the chance of winning $20 million.

In my four weeks of lottery ticket purchasing, I think I won about $13 all up. Obviously I can’t expect to have won big cash straight away, but hey – it would have been nice.

When I was in high school, our Deputy Principal won about $14 million. He was a year off retirement so he took it early and I presume, is still living the high life. He was a really great guy with genuine passion for teaching and the wellbeing of students and at the time I couldn’t have thought of a better person to win $14 million.

Have you ever won the lottery, or has anyone you know? I want to hear about it whether it’s a minuscule $8 or an awesome $50,000.

And while we’re all having a dribble about how good being a multi-millionaire would be, what would you spend it on if you won? I would do the obvious things like investing in property, a nice holiday and whatnot, but I also really would like to start a cat shelter in Canberra. A decent sized one with the capacity to shelter a large amount of cats. So if I was fortunate enough to win big, the cats of the Capital would be the real winners.

As for the Evatt Newsagency, I reckon they’ll now be busier than ever. I might even go and buy a ticket myself.

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justin heywood7:48 pm 31 Dec 14

We’ll I’ve had a stroke of luck. Apparently I’m within a hair’s breadth of winning big in Reader’s Digest (what,wonderful people, I don’t even subscribe), and I’ve recently become associated with an African friend who was a General but now fallen on hard times. He’s paying me a fortune just to transfer his money out of Nigeria. (Haven’t heard from him for a while though, hope he got the small deposit I sent him)

I’ve promised myself that I’ll remain humble and generous despite my fabulous wealth. To that end, I promise to share my fortune with every RiotACT regular as a way of saying ‘Happy New Year’ to each and every one of you, including the new owners and writers, who have done a sterling job.

I don’t always agree some of you but it’s only a blog and a thus small part of life so best wishes to you all.

Holden Caulfield2:20 pm 31 Dec 14

Turns out someone from Canberra won that $30 million I mentioned. Sadly I can confirm it wasn’t me.

Holden Caulfield11:08 am 10 Dec 14

Oh well, on the positive side OzLotto has jackpotted to $30m next week!

Felix the Cat9:46 am 10 Dec 14

I’m the same regarding buying lotto tickets. I tend to just buy when a major draw for lots of money is up for grabs.

I think the most I’ve ever won was about $23, I was actually quite stoked with that, I can’t imagine what winning a million dollars would be like! I wouldn’t be celebrating until or telling anyone until I had the cheque (is that how they pay big wins?) in the bank, and cleared.

From a pure dollars and cents point of view people are probably better off to just put that $10-$15 each week into a bank account, but then on the other hand you have zero chance of winning if you don’t buy a ticket and if you can afford it then why not buy a ticket.

I’ve always been good with money – I save well, I don’t make wasteful purchases, etc. If I was to win a sizeable amount I’d probably end up just saving 90% of it and letting it accrue interest.

Did Dr Karl back that claim with any evidence?

Even if I did win big from my regular Lotto games, I’d still do some volunteer type work somewhere. Just to keep me out of the pub until midday…

Alexandra Craig4:28 pm 09 Dec 14

Midge_Ures_SixLegged_LoveChild said :

I got 6 numbers a few years back and won a whopping $328 which was about what I spent celebrating before I found out how much i had won.

Bahaha, oh no. At least you had fun for a bit.

i have a crack now and again – have won the odd amount between ten and twenty back, about the cost of the ticket. my folks were pre-emptive and bought me a ticket in next month’s thrity million draw and if i win that i’ll buy nice digs here and somewhere holiday-ish, travel, put a load away for the astromonkeys, become philanthropic and stop setting an alarm to get up to go to work.

oh, and i had this really weird dream where my numbers came up and…

Alexandra Craig11:27 am 09 Dec 14

Rollersk8r said :

Listening to “what I’d do if I won lotto” is the second most boring topic ever, just behind hearing about “this really weird dream I had”…

Don’t read the comments on this article then.

Holden Caulfield said :

I’m a semi-regular but will gladly retire (on two counts) if I claim the $20m on offer in tonight’s OzLotto.

I’m too young to retire in the usual sense, but to me retirement is living a life free of financial burden (mortgage etc) and being able to do whatever the hell you want.

Yup, I’m the same re retirement in the usual sense. Even if I had an unlimited bank account for the rest of my life, I suspect it would be ridiculously fun for maybe 3 years…. then I’d start to get bored.

Midge_Ures_SixLegged_LoveChild10:38 am 09 Dec 14

I got 6 numbers a few years back and won a whopping $328 which was about what I spent celebrating before I found out how much i had won.

Listening to “what I’d do if I won lotto” is the second most boring topic ever, just behind hearing about “this really weird dream I had”…

Holden Caulfield9:22 am 09 Dec 14

I’m a semi-regular but will gladly retire (on two counts) if I claim the $20m on offer in tonight’s OzLotto.

I’m too young to retire in the usual sense, but to me retirement is living a life free of financial burden (mortgage etc) and being able to do whatever the hell you want.

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