Tag Archives: gambling

Making Bets

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Gambling seems to be everywhere these days.  The commercials for betting apps inundate my TV.  With the Super Bowl in Las Vegas (the casino capitol of the country) this year, the number of things you could bet on seemed to be never-ending….right down to the color of Taylor Swift’s shirt.  Casinos are popping up in shopping malls.  Sports betting is an app on your phone.  Lottery tickets are available from a vending machine at the convenience store.  It’s pervasive.

Betting on things is generally not the best idea.  It’s definitely not a solid plan for a stable income.  You should never bet money that you can’t afford to lose.  The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.  The odds are always stacked against you.  Yet that doesn’t stop me from occasionally buying a Power Ball ticket and dreaming of what I would do if I won several million dollars.  It’s not an investment strategy.  It’s a source of entertainment. I don’t do it often, and I go into it knowing I’m probably going to lose.

There are ways to make bets that are not necessarily detrimental.  One year I used my income tax refund to buy some stocks.  I picked a few companies whose products I used and bought 10 shares of each.  One of those companies was a DVD rental by mail company called Netflix.  Those 10 shares cost me $170, and I sold them several years later for a few thousand dollars.  That was a good bet, which funded the installation of central air conditioning in my house.  I don’t remember what the other stocks I bought at that time were….because they were not good bets.

There are more educated, less risky ways to bet on things.  My retirement fund is largely in stocks, but it is managed by people who do that for a living—people that do research and keep things balanced appropriately for where my risk level should be at this point in my career.  It’s definitely beyond my skillset.  But there is still some risk involved in anything that involves the stock market.  There’s still some level of betting involved.

One of the smartest bets you can make is to bet on yourself.  Every time you pursue something new, you are betting on yourself.  Maybe you are taking a new job.  Maybe pursuing a new degree or certification. Maybe starting a business. Maybe something as simple as cooking a new recipe for the first time. Every time you attempt something, you are betting on yourself.  You won’t always succeed.  But you are taking the risk and putting yourself out there. And the person who bets on themself is miles ahead of the person who is afraid to try.

Regardless of what color shirt Taylor Swift wore to the Super Bowl, there are good bets and bad bets.  But betting on yourself is ALWAYS a good bet.

Crypto: Enter at Your Own Risk

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I watched the Super Bowl on Sunday.  I’m not normally a pro football fan (though I do faithfully watch Penn State football games).  But there’s something about the Super Bowl that I really enjoy.  It’s a purely American event.  I sit on the couch with my husband and eat pork rinds and pizza and chicken wings as we watch the game.  And when the game doesn’t hold my attention, the commercials generally do.  My personal favorite this year was the Doritos-loving Sloth.  But the thing that kept popping up in the ads this year was cryptocurrency.  I was stunned by the number of ads for both crypto and for places to store your crypto.  And it made me realize just how little I know about the topic.

I started in on research and was quickly in over my head.  The things I did gather is that there is the cryptocurrency itself (Bitcoin, Dogecoin, etc.) and the crypto wallets (Coinbase, Mycelium, etc.).  The currency that doesn’t physically exist is then stored in these wallets that don’t physically exist.  The whole thing is a bit unsettling to me.  There have been so many news stories about how crypto has been extraordinarily volatile.  So this is less like a savings account and more like an investment in the stock market.  Except even more volatile.  I’m normally not terribly conservative with my investment strategies, but crypto is not where I want my retirement funds to be invested.  I think if I were to venture into this world, I would not invest anything that I wasn’t prepared to lose altogether.  And that’s the same strategy I use for gambling (I like the nickel slots on rare occasion, as well as raffle and lottery tickets).  I go in prepared to lose.  It’s a form of entertainment rather than an investment.

I think the reason the crypto commercials left me feeling unsettled is because of the sheer number of those ads.  The last time I remember that many similarly-based Super Bowl ads was in 2000, for Super Bowl XXXIV.  Fourteen different tech companies (most of them no longer in existence) advertised during that Super Bowl, which is why it is still referred to as the Dot Com Super Bowl.  What makes this so unsettling for me is what happened just a few months later.  That is when the Dot Com Bubble burst.  A lot of people lost a LOT of money in the stock market that year.  A lot of tech companies lost significant value, and even more shuttered altogether. (Personally I breathed a huge sigh of relief that I had sold most of my investments in 1999 to put a down payment on a condo).

Cryptocurrency might be the way of the future.  Or it might not.  But right now, I’m looking at it more as a gamble than as an investment.

Lottery Fever

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Just a week ago the whole country was going a little nutty for the Mega Millions lottery drawing.  The idea of winning $1.6 billion overnight can definitely pique a person’s interest.  I admit it.  I bought $20 worth of tickets myself.  I spent $20 for the privilege of dreaming of what I would do with my millions in the off-chance that the numbers fell in my favor.

I didn’t win.  I didn’t expect to win.  I’ve run the numbers myself enough times to fully understand what my father always told me:  “The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.”  If you play with regularity…yes….you might win a little bit from time to time.  But usually you don’t.  And if you were to put that money into a savings or investment plan rather than spending it on the lottery you would come out much further ahead.

Yet I played.  I knew I wouldn’t win and still I played.  I didn’t pay my money expecting to win.  I paid my money for a couple of nights of dreaming that maybe I could win.  I didn’t mortgage my house to buy thousands of tickets.  I bought what I was comfortable with losing.  And that’s what makes it ok.  It was $20 worth of entertainment.  I knew it wasn’t an investment in my future.  It was just fun to be a part of it and dream a bit.  That’s the way gambling is supposed to work.  Never bet more than you can afford to lose.  And don’t continue to play after you lose that amount.

And my fun isn’t totally over yet.  In my wallet I have a raffle ticket that I bought for $25.  Tonight I’ll find out if I win a brand new Subaru Forester (or $20,000 cash—my choice), or if I’ve just donated $25 to a local animal shelter that I probably would have donated to within the next few months anyway.  You can’t win if you don’t play.  But you should only play with money you are prepared to lose.