Buying a lottery ticket is a gamble. But some people would say that investing is to. So which is better; spending every week or buying a lottery ticket on websites such as lottoland.ie? That has been an ongoing debate between experienced investors and professionals in the gambling industry.
Buying weekly lottery tickets add up to thousands of dollars spent before you know. But investing those same thousands of dollars isn’t necessarily any safer. You could just as quickly lose money investing in stocks every week as you could buying lottery tickets every week. That is where people differ in their opinions about how money is best spent.
There is a strong argument to be made for regularly investing over playing the lottery. Statistically, you are more likely to come out on top of investments than you are from buying lottery tickets.
However, if you are one of those people who don’t understand investing, you may feel like using your money on lottery tickets is a better use of it. Either way, you are taking the chance that when all is said and done, you will have made more money than you will have lost.
You may feel like if you invest money, you will never get ahead. But you are more likely to than you would be simply from playing the lottery unless you win a significant amount. Yet with the odds of doing so being so small, many people will argue that investing is always a better idea.
If you do decide you’d rather spend than invest, you have another decision to make. Do you want to buy multiple tickets for one drawing or buy one or two tickets for every single lottery drawing?
Studies of the UK lottery and its winners have shown that if they played consistently for 25 years, they stood to lose 18,000 pounds. But if they had invested the money, they instead used to play the lottery. They would have had approximately 14,000 pounds.
That shows that investing is a more profitable option than buying lottery tickets consistently. The only valid reason to buy those tickets rather than spending the money is the entertainment value you would get out of it. But for many people, that is enough of a lure to get them to do so.
Tips for not running out of money if you win the lottery
The lottery is not the most advisable way to win a significant sum of money due to the low probability of success it offers. Even so, the essential social implementation of the game above means that on specific dates, such as Christmas, a tenth of the lottery can become highly valued.
Discretion
It is not easy to restrain yourself from the surprise and the joy of knowing that you are the winner of a considerable amount of money. Still, it is convenient to manage the emotion with containment and in strictest privacy. The fewer people who are aware of the news, there will be fewer problems to face a situation in which family, friends, and financial institutions usually want to influence the fate of the award. Being discreet avoids having to deal with added pressures that can lead to hasty decisions.
Adequate advice
Whether you think you know what to do with the prize or not, it is recommended to seek the advice of a professional with experience in the management of investments and assets. Those derived from a lottery prize are very diverse, and their complexity should not be ignored. Matters such as financial aspects and the destination and nature of the possible investments to be made are crucial for the right financial health of an award-winning person who, generally, do not have training in this regard.
Debts, first
The initial step in the case of having debts is to get rid of them. Especially if they are executive debts, that is, those that have to do with defaults, since they imply substantial default interests. Regarding the cancellation of loans or mortgages, it will depend on whether it is appropriate according to the terms of their contracts. In the case of a mortgage, a solution to take into account, if you do not want to amortize fully, happens to do so partially by decreasing the number of installments to be paid and thus shortening the terms. However, in times of low rates, as is the case, repaying a loan may not be as attractive as making a new investment as an alternative.
How to invest
Diversify
Regardless of the amount of the prize, it is not advisable to put the money to work in the same depositor in a single investment. It is convenient to distribute capital in more than one destination so as not to unnecessarily increase the risk of trusting the money earned to third parties.
According to the profile
The decision on where to place the money will depend on the profile of the winner before the risk. Those who do not want to assume certain investment risks in the markets have the possibility of betting on safer but less profitable alternatives such as long-term savings deposits, pension plans, corporate debt, art, or the acquisition of real estate as an investment.
For more comfortable profiles with the risk and the expectation of higher returns, the market offers products such as investment funds that make it possible to obtain portfolios with a greater preponderance of fixed income or variable income depending on what the investment wishes to risk or not. In the case of investment funds, it is recommended to those who bet on them to be attentive to their continuous evolution, especially the higher their variable composition.
Not everything is profitability and risk
Profitability and risk should not be the only criteria to consider when choosing the destination of the money. Factors such as the possibility of converting investments into liquids, the taxation of the chosen modalities, and the content of the small print must be worth in gold before making the final decision.
The importance of liquidity
Investing with criteria is the best way to avoid squandering the money obtained in a short time, but it is not necessary to immobilize all the capital. Life has unforeseen events that appear by definition when you least expect it and those that have to be faced. Therefore, it is recommended to keep a portion of the capital in a deposit that allows for immediate liquidity.
Even though the final decision rests with the owner of the money derived from the prize, the chosen advisor is the one who has to carry out the previous study of the alternatives and explain it later. It is not advisable to get carried away by advice from friends and family without the professional knowing the details of possible external offers that take place.
Final Word
Whether to invest or buy lottery tickets is a personal decision. There are benefits to both options; it only matters which one means more to you. While many people elect to invest their money, others can’t resist using it to play the lottery.
Only you can decide what the best decision for you. Spending may sound boring, but it may be worth the boredom in the end. Many people have struggled over the fact of whether to invest or play.
