Gambling Series 3: It Can be a Distraction

This is where personal finance gets personal. I said at the end of the last post that some of us are more susceptible to getting hooked on gambling, depending on where we are in life. Let's get into that.

If I knew then what I know now, I never would've gotten into the lottery and gambling in the first place, because of where I was in life.

I wasn't doing what I wanted to do, I wasn't making the kind of money I wanted to make, I wasn't living where I wanted to live. I was at a time in life some of us reach when it's as if we wake up and look around and we say, "What the hell happened to my life? How did I get here?"

Well, if someone's at that point in their life, and you throw the lottery and gambling into it, there's a great chance it would just make it worse, because the lottery and gambling can seem like a way out, it can seem like a way to fix some of those problems, and it's a distraction from those problems.

So about a year and a half after I got into playing the lottery and gambling, let's see where I'm at in life. I'm not doing what I want to do, I'm not making the kind of money I want to make, I'm not living where I want to live, and now I'm BROKE.

I've talked in posts about the odds of hitting a lottery jackpot, an amount of money that would actually be life-changing, because if you play the lottery you're going to win smaller amounts, sometimes you might just break even. But to win a jackpot in Mega Millions or Powerball, the odds are about 1 in 300,000,000. That's three hundred million. It's hard for our brains to really comprehend numbers that size. To win a smaller amount, like a million, the odds are still one in millions.

But even if we know those odds, we become like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber:

I might try researching that sometime, because I'm not sure if it's pride or arrogance, or something like hope or optimism, but there's something in people that makes them think they're going to be the one to beat the odds. People think, "someone's going to win and it could be me."

Well yeah, it could, but the odds are still one in three hundred million. So most likely it won't be you, sorry.

So if someone's in a bad place already, and you throw gambling into it, it will probably make things worse. Because it's a distraction from the real problems, and it can seem like a way to reach what they really want.

Once I got into gambling, the only thing that changed in my life is that now I'm broke.

I'm taking a break from gambling right now. I don't have anything against gambling itself and I'll probably go back to it eventually, so I wouldn't say that no one should gamble ever. But I will say that if you're in a bad place in life already, then don't try gambling. It is not the right time.

Please contact me with any questions or comments.

In the next post, I'm going to talk about the shame associated with gambling, and I'm going to talk about chasing losses.

Thank you for reading.