The Office Lottery Pool - Am I an Idiot?

December 6, 2007

Ok, I know all us worker bees in the corporate world have run into this before, or perhaps regularly, like me. Your friends at the office seem to think that they have a better chance at winning the Lottery, or the Florida Lotto, in my case, if we pool our resources and all chip in to buy a bunch of tickets.

Here’s some quick statistics from plainmath.net and other sources on winning the lottery, as well as some interesting facts:

The chance of winning the jackpot is 1 in 22,957,480 or the percentage equivalent of .000004%
The chance of being hit by lightning is 1 in 2,650,000.
The chance of dying from a flesh eating bacteria is 1 in 1,000,000.
The chance of dying from a snake bite or bee sting is 1 in 100,000.
The chance of being hit by an asteroid in 2029 is 1 in 40.

Ok, you get the point.

But, what do I do? Occasionally, I get the courage to say no, but most of the time, I chip in. Why? Despite the stunning logic proving that I’m wasting my money, they are my friends, and the brief sense of camaraderie is worth $5/month to me.

So if I didn’t play the lotto in the office pool and saved my $5 a month, where would it get me? The following shows how much I’d make if I put the $60 in an investment earning an 8% return: