Playing the lottery for the purpose of getting rich is almost as adventurous as wandering around town until you find a briefcase full of money dumped on a street corner. However, there is a type of lottery where it is worth betting: because it does not sell illusion, but hard cash .
Before talking about it, however, it should be remembered that most citizens are terrible savers, especially since they have the possibility of buying on credit.
Save the money
Carpe diem, it is better to spend now than to save money until the grave. This and other maxims are those that encourage the poor saving capacity of the average citizen. For example, the personal savings rate in the United States is around 4%, but about $ 60 billion is spent each year on lottery tickets .
And worst of all: Almost half of low-income people consider the lottery their best chance to improve their situation.
Playing the lottery, however, is fun and exciting. How to achieve that same feeling while saving money? Here’s what underlies the premium-linked savings account (PLS), which economists Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt talk about in their book Think Like a Freak :
Instead of spending a hundred dollars on lottery tickets, you deposit them in a bank. Let’s say the current interest rate is 1%. In a PLS account you agree to put a small portion of that interest, perhaps 0.25%, which is then pooled with all the small portions of PLS ​​depositors. What about the money pot? A random winner is paid periodically, just like the lottery!
Even if you never hit the jackpot, most of your lottery spending will not fall on deaf ears, but much of that money remains in the bank account earning interest .
PLS programs have helped people around the world save money and not waste their hard-earned wages on the lottery. In Michigan, a group of credit unions recently launched a PLS pilot program called "Save to Earn." The first big winner was an eighty-six-year-old woman named Billie June Smith. With a deposit of only $ 75 to his account, he won a prize of 100,000.