Leave Your Financial Freedom To Chance

Aka, another way to destroy your financial freedom.

A guaranteed way to ensure financial failure is to leave your wealth to chance.

Millions and millions of people do this everyday. These are often the very same people who say they don’t have money to invest!

I’m talking about the lottery – hoping that a magic ticket will instantly create your wealthy life.

Here’s some scary stats:

South Africans spend over R3.9 billion (US$390 million) a year on the LOTTO with an average of five million transactions a week.  82% of South Africans play the lottery once a week spending an average of R81 (US$8) per month.

What about the Brits? Around 60% of UK adults play the Lotto regularly, spending more than £6bn annually and an average of £208 per person.

In the United States, half of American adults spend US$45 billion annually on some 35,000 lottery games.

Studies show that the heaviest lottery players around the world – the 20% of players who contribute 82% of lottery revenue – are low-income earners. In South Africa, 27% of lottery players are unemployed and 43% earn less than R2,000 (US$200) a month.  All of this for a CHANCE to win some money, a very poor 1 in 20,358,520 chance of winning (yup, less than one chance in 20 million to win the jackpot).

So… let’s take that R81 (US$8) a month that 82% of mostly impoverished South Africans manage to find to play the lottery.  If those same people took that same R81 a month, from the age of 18 until retirement at 65, and invested it in a simple stock market tracking investment returning 10% a year, they would be guaranteed millionaires at 65 with a whopping R1,047,089.

Imagine what South Africa could be like if, instead of playing the LOTTO, 82% of the population chose wealth. Imagine if 82% of the population became millionaires and were able to support themselves and their families. This is possible for wealth chefs who chose guaranteed wealth over an impossibly slim chance of a lottery win.

Wealth chefs don’t leave something as important as their financial freedom to chance.

You still fancy your chances with a flutter, do you? 

I’m having way too much fun with the statistics to stop. Let’s look at how slim your chances really are.

Your odds of winning the lottery jackpot in the UK, Europa or the USA are even worse than in South Africa, with the odds usually at over 100 million to one, a tiny, minuscule, teeny, infinitesimal 0.000001% chance.

But this is just a number, right? It only hits home when you put it into perspective by comparing against other things with long odds.

Here’s my list of loony comparisons.

You don’t have to buy a lottery ticket to ‘win’ these – most could occur just because you're on this earth and breathing.

The Bad News:

• You’re 305 times more likely to be struck by lightning than you are to win the lotto.
• You’re 10,336 times more likely to be born albino.
• You’re 1,526 times more likely to visit the ER due to an injury from a pogo stick (just say no to the pogo!).
• You are 24 times more likely to be executed in the U.S. – and 3 times more likely to be put on death row… and then exonerated!
• You are 1,004,065 times more likely to be audited by the tax man. 
• You are 3,514,230 times more likely to be smart enough to be in Mensa (although perhaps not if you still think the lottery is your ticket to financial freedom!).
• You’re 7,028,461 times more likely to be following Lady Gaga on twitter.
• You’re 2,285,714 times more likely to die in a transportation accident.
• You’re 35,200 times more likely to get a hole in one (but then you do have to play golf).
• You’re 207 times more likely to get dealt a royal flush.
• You’re 266 times more likely to win an Olympic gold medal (that explains the Jamaican bobsled team).
• You’re 2,000 times more likely to be currently dating a supermodel (not sure if this includes male ramp models!).
• You’re almost 9 times more likely to be canonized (I think my personal odds are significantly slimmer than that!).
• You’re 176,000 times more likely to find a four leaf clover on your first try (my friend in New York state has a whole field of mutant 4 leaf clovers – if you visit her your odds will improve significantly).
• You’re 15,000 times more likely to win an academy award.
• You’re 48,587 times more likely to injure yourself mowing the lawn (unless you’ve pimped your mower, then it’s slightly higher).
• You’re 35,000 times more likely to be living on the earth when a catastrophic asteroid hits.
• You’re 123,000,000 times more likely to get married after the age of 40.
• You’re 818,600 times more likely to date a millionaire.
• You’re 26,727 times more likely to cut yourself shaving (seriously? I achieve odds of almost 1:1… but then this stat probably includes both genders and men get a lot more practice).
• You’re 39,426 times more likely to be seriously injured by a chainsaw.

 The Good News:

• You are 1,888 times more likely to win the lottery than you are to be struck by lightning twice.
• You’re 1,034,880 times MORE likely to win the lottery than to have a meteor land on your house.
• And lastly, you are 35,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more likely to win the lotto than you are to experience quantum tunneling (ie, passing through a brick wall like a sci-fi character).

Know any people likely to be declared saints? And yet you being declared a saint is 9 times more likely than winning the jackpot! Makes you think, doesn’t it?

To any and all of you that have bought tickets out there, best of luck to you and may your every delusion come true.

Money cooks leave their financial freedom to chance.
Wealth chefs choose strategies that guarantee their
financial freedom.

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