Financial Advice/Motivation

The Lottery Game — Let’s Talk About The Winning Numbers

‘’There are people who have money and there are people who are rich’’ Coco Channel

I was reading today’s newspaper (London Metro), and I saw so many adverts about the weekend lottery jackpots.

Tonight — Set for life — £10,000 every month for 30 years.

This Friday — Euromillion hot pick — £1m.

This Friday — Euromillion — £47m

This Friday — Thunderball — £500,000

This Saturday — Lotto hot pick — £350,000.

This Saturday Lotto — £20m.

And many instant scratch cards are also available.

The advert said, ‘’you have to be in it to win it.’’

The National Lottery game appeals to middle-aged people and older adults. So people are being lured to pick up a ticket or two with the hope of hitting the jackpot. An answer to ‘’getting rich quick’’. I smiled because I realised that this is a getting rich quick without any guarantee, just like the internet solopreneurs will try to convince you to take a course or a programme they offer, and pronto, you leave a life of poverty behind.

An illusion Of The Mind

Since the National Lottery was launched in the UK, in 1994, it has generated £42 billion pounds from players, (November 2020 data). Most are students, people of little means and daydreamers. It has also generated 5,900 millionaires, £7.1 billion in prize money. Around £30 million is raised weekly.

These sorts of adverts are everywhere and seem to promote an easier route to wealth without work. You have the adverts on billboards and virtually everywhere designed to lure you and me, I mean those of us with limited means and a modest lifestyle in exchange for what I will call an illusion of the mind. So if we say these adverts create illusion and are far from reality, what then is the reality or some winning numbers for lotteries in the UK, (where I am most familiar with?).

What are your chances of winning the lottery? According to the National Lottery website, the odds of winning the jackpots are:

Lotto jackpot: 1 in 45,057,474

EuroMillions jackpot: 1 in 139,838,160

Set For Life top prize: 1 in 15,339,390

Thunderball top prize: 1 in 8,060,598

According to a student website(more and more students are spending essential money on lotteries),

‘‘According to Save The Student, you are almost five times more likely to be struck by lightning, 64 times more likely to be crushed by a meteorite, and 4,000 times more likely to win an Oscar.’’

The highest figure won in 2019 is £170 million, followed by £161 million in 2011. A pound spent on a lottery instead of a hot meal is pathetic.

Some UK Lottery Facts

• Players only have 180 days from the day of the draw to claim their prize. This meant that in 2015, a claim of £4.6million in Barking and Dagenham almost went unclaimed when the winner claimed it with just three days spare.
• The largest prize ever to go unclaimed was from the EuroMillions draw on 8 June 2012. A ticket that won a huge £63,837,543.60 had been bought by a player in the Stevenage and Hitchin area but never claimed.
• The majority of players still play in-store — with just 25% of players getting their tickets online
• Jackpot winners take on average 4.4 holidays a year, with 29 per cent taking five or more.
• On top of this, 80 per cent of winners own a holiday home and the US is the favourite holiday destination with 37 per cent visiting shortly after a win.
• Taking into account everything a winner has done with their money, including spending, saving and gifting, only 82 per cent of winners reveal that they are now as — or more — well off than the day they first received their winnings.
• This means one-fifth of winners actually have LESS money than before they won. This is likely to include Michael Carroll, famously known as the ‘Lotto Lout’ or ‘King of Chavs’ who splashed all £10million of his winnings in just a couple of years, meaning he then had to sign on to claim benefits again.
• He now reportedly works as a lumberjack earning £10 an hour.
• About 50% of lottery players are from the working class, whereas about 35% are those not working. Men play more than women. Hence playing the National Lottery has become a culture of UK people.

The Winning Number

The lottery winning number is to teach simple plain, honest hard work and resilience by which everyone can become a millionaire. Why? Because there are many millionaires through diligence and hard work than through lottery jackpots. All the adverts are doing is trying to shift people's minds to believe that a lottery jackpot is a solution to their poverty, laziness and procrastination.

If people are lazy, procrastinate about their dreams, plans and goals, then gambling is going to make it worse.

So what are you waiting for? You are not far away from becoming a wealthy individual who can meet his/her responsibilities easily through your own hard work. The first step is to decide what you want to do, and then set out your plan of action to get there. Empower yourself with adequate training and mentorship, and before you know it, you are there. It is much easier to focus your attention if you have a goal in sight.

“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” — Pablo Picasso

This will neither be a get rich quick nor an easy way, but rather a systematic and surer approach to winning the life game.

The Takeaways

• “A goal properly set is halfway reached.” — Zig Ziglar
• The advert for winning the jackpot says, ‘’you’ve got to be in it to win it.’ but I propose that ‘’You have to be insane to be in it’’.