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"The poorest third of households buy half of all lotto tickets, according to a Duke University study in the 1980s, in part because lotteries are advertised most
by ThrowawayR2 7y ago
"The poorest third of households buy half of all lotto tickets, according to a Duke University study in the 1980s, in part because lotteries are advertised most aggressively in poorer neighborhoods."
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/lotteries-americas-70-billion-shame/392870/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/lotteri...
[EDIT] It's not an insignificant amount either: half of $70 billion. From the same article:
"According to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, lotteries took in $70.1 billion in sales in the 2014 fiscal year. That’s more than Americans in all 50 states spent on sports tickets, books, video games, movie tickets, and recorded music sales."
- throwaway2048 7y agoI bet they have televisions too, the sheer audacity
- manigandham 7y agoWhat? The point is that lack of funds for investing is clearly not the problem if they're buying so many lotto tickets.
- throwaway2048 7y agoAnd they have televisions too, other money they spend that they could have spent on investing.
- manigandham 7y agoTrue. Nobody said they had to give up TVs though.
- robjan 7y agoWhat is the volume on lotto tickets vs the stock market. Are you really telling me that someone who spends $2 per week (or whatever your lotto price is) on lotto tickets could afford to create a balanced stock portfolio or even buy one stock? Buy ETFs? The buy in price for SPY is US$329. By the time you saved up enough $2/week to buy one unit of that stock it's already too expensive.
- manigandham 7y agoRobinhood lets you buy for $1 so yes you can start by investing that little. And $2/week from age 18 to 65 will give you $100k by just following the S&P. If you can buy lotto tickets then you can invest, and if you're buying lotto tickets then you're probably wasting other money too.
- robjan 7y agoPlease tell me what extrapolation you are basing this on? Even if you dump all the money into SP500 today and backtest that I can't get close to your figures unless I backtest against the recent bull market only.
- manigandham 7y agoAverage annualized return rate for S&P is about 10%. $8/month x 47 years @ 10% = 100k roughly. Try this: https://www.daveramsey.com/smartvestor/investment-calculator https://www.daveramsey.com/smartvestor/investment-calculator
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]