It usually works out to about a -90% ROI, though I did just somewhat undermine my point by hitting $2,000,000 (5 white balls + powerplay) after 246 years and becoming profitable. First time I've ever hit on one of these, I let one go for several millenia one time.
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.
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".
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.
Having a snickers bar is fine if you make it a rare reward, eating several every day isn’t.
Etc etc etc.
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.
28% also has to be donated to charity.
Which means, assuming you would donate to charity anyway, you are only wasting, on average, 30% of your money.
That is substantially better than the US powerball (at ~90%).
This article added in sales numbers to estimate the actual expected value and it peaks around a $500 million jackpot with an expected value of $.85 from a $2.00 ticket. (very close to the bottom)
Usually the optimum bet is zero because the expected value is negative.
But when the jackpot gets big enough, occasionally the Kelly Criterion will advise buying a ticket or two if your bankroll is really big, like $10 million.
Of course, if you did this you might get unlucky and find that there's another winner in that draw, in which case you'd have to split the winnings and probably wouldn't make your money back.
