[mlyle]

Of course, spending a few bucks per week isn't necessarily irrational. The hope and entertainment has some value.

And, of course, the marginal value of a couple bucks more in your pocket may be nil, but the life-changing experience of a win may have considerably more value; that is, marginal utility may not just flow smoothly downwards.

[panarky]

> isn't necessarily irrational

I used to say this to justify buying 20 tickets twice a week.

It's not irrational I can afford it, right? And the purchase gives me the psychological reward of dreaming about a big win.

But then after every draw I'd check my numbers and suffer a twinge of buyer's remorse. For me, that (small) regret more than offset any positive psychological benefit. It was a minor addiction that did more harm than good.

So now I've cured my addiction by turning Buyers Remorse into whatever the opposite of that is.

I have a cron job that generates 20 picks twice a week before each Mega Millions (US) draw.

I never buy these numbers -- the script just saves them in a Google Doc so there's evidence of the numbers and the timestamp when they were chosen.

Then after the draw, it checks them against the winning numbers, and emails me the results.

Now twice a week I get the (small) psychological benefit of realizing I didn't waste $40.

Maybe the opposite of Buyers Remorse is "Decliners Delight".

[sambapa]

Wow, I hope that this cron job won't win anything significant. Imagine the remorse of nut buying those lucky numbers!

[mlyle]

Everything's different for everyone.

I buy a few tickets every time the expected value might be weakly positive, even though this still doesn't make it a "good purchase."

And I've played blackjack under conditions (rules and my carefulness of play) where it's expected to be slightly money-losing, but had an exhilarating couple of hours and conversation. Cheap entertainment compared to many other things.

[CodeSgt]

Anything in excess is bad. Having a couple drinks throughout your week is fine, going on a bender and downing 20 drinks one night per week isn’t.

Having a snickers bar is fine if you make it a rare reward, eating several every day isn’t.

Etc etc etc.

[dylan604]

Isn't there another study of people that won big have also lost it/squandered it all within a fairly short amount of time?

[jmharvey]

Afaik (and I watch this fairly closely) there hasn't been a study. There are a lot of anecdotes, typically of the form "a person won a few million but spent like they had an income of a few million per year," sometimes of the form "a person won a huge amount of money but it turns out money doesn't solve all problems," and sometimes of the form "a person won a huge amount of money and invested it poorly." But most people who win a big lottery are still rich a decade or two later.

[Night_Thastus]

Even those who would be deemed "responsible" (already somewhat wealthy, otherwise stable) often end up far worse off.

It often ends in losing friendships, ties with family, death/kidnapping/blackmail threats both close and far away, endless frivolous lawsuits, financial ruin, etc.

The ratio of "happily ever after" stories to horror stories for winning the lottery seems a bit low for my tastes.

[CodeSgt]

That’s just survivorship bias (or perhaps, the opposite).

You don’t hear the happily ever after stories because they don’t tend to reach out to the media after a few years and say “Hey! FYI I’m still rich and my life is perfect.”. They’re off enjoying their money somewhere. The scandals seem more common because those are the only situations that really get publicized.

[dylan604]

>they don’t tend to reach out to the media after a few years and say “Hey! FYI I’m still rich and my life is perfect.”

No, that's what social media is for

[chmod775]

Gamblers hardly intersects people who spend their money responsibly.