Accessible Lotto, Anyone?

I never thought this is going happen. But it did. Betting on lottery just got easier with Globe (come on, Globe! What were you thinking?!)

Being a financial planner, I feel so sad about it (and at the same time, very disappointed with Globe). I know of people who feel that this is their way out of poverty (heck, my boyfriend even had those "pag nanalo ako sa lotto" moment, even enumerating what he wants to buy). Who wouldn't? 6/55 jackpot will change a lot of lives. However, let's do the math. Using Excel (I suck at computing statistics manually), chances of winning are:

Grand Lotto 6/55 - 1 out of 28,989,675
Super Lotto 6/49- 1 out of 13,983,816
MegaLotto 6/45 - 1 out of 8,145,060
Lotto 6/42 - 1 out of 5,245,786

(Oh by the way, my Excel formula is =COMBIN(total number of items,number of items chosen), example: =COMBIN(55,6) for 6/55. Just in case you want to try other combinations)

Interestingly, I came across this US website listing the 11 things that are most likely to happen than winning a Powerball jackpot. Basically, with Powerball, the player will choose 5 numbers from a set of 59 white balls and 1 number from a set of 35 red balls. Odds of winning is 1 out of 175,223,510. This is even larger than the chances of you getting struck by lightning.

There are people who don't want to take the risk when in comes to money matters, hence they stay away from investments such as stocks, mutual funds, and UITFs thinking that they are not safe. But the odds of winning in lotto is much more awful! Imagine losing 100% of your "investment" in just a day (funny that some people treat it as "investment," betting on the same set of numbers every time!)

Having said that, I don't think making lottery accessible is a good idea. And if I receive more of those text scams asking for cellphone loads, I would hate this the more.

P.S. And oh, those "lucky picks" are not really that lucky. In fact, they should be called "random picks" instead because they are simply system-generated figures.