Bait that yields no catch

According to a study by the National Lottery Commission (NLC) in 2011, the lottery in South Africa is hugely supported by poor and low income earners.

73% of Lotto’s most loyal players earn less than R5 000 a month – some of them even earn less than R1 000 a month.

In the study, people have confessed to forgoing necessities in order to spend more money on Lotto tickets.

Unfortunately, this is not a ‘South African’ problem as the trend is consistent across the globe.

A part of me understands the desperation that could lead one to look for a ‘quick fix’.

We take the bit of hard earned money and throw it into schemes that are making other people richer quicker. I have always been rather suspicious of the low number of people who seem to have won the jackpot over the years.

Even if there are no tricks, when will get tired of chasing bait that will never yield a catch?

Could we not have been investing our money in something worthwhile?

I mean if you are using R10 every week to buy tickets, that is R520 a year.

In 2014 Gidani, the company that operated the National Lottery before Ithuba, said that Lotto created 563 millionaires in seven years.

That simply means that your chances of winning the jackpot are 13,983,816 to 1. Totally against you!

Chances of being struck by lightning are even better at 1 to 700,000.

It seems that of the many bad money habits, this one is certainly keeping us poor.

We have no savings and no investments, but we gamble.