The theme this week on the Retirement Quick Tips Podcast is: How To Spot & Avoid Get-Rich-Quick Schemes

Today, I’m talking about the get-rich-quick scheme you’ve already fallen for. Can you guess what it is? 

The business school building at Portland State University where I went to college was nicknamed the lotto building, because it was built with Oregon lottery dollars. That was very instructive for me, and despite knowing that the odds of winning were dismal, it was a multi-million dollar building that was funded by people who found out the hard way that the odds were against them. 

While the lottery is a perfectly legal scheme, it still checks the most important box that I talked about earlier this week as a tell-tale sign - big payoffs for little investment and no time or hard work required. 

The problem with the lottery, or more generally, gambling is that too many people who play the lottery or gamble, do so with the hope that they’ll win, and some people even gamble with their paycheck for the month. 

A recent article in the WSJ about the 1.3 billion mega millions jackpot, looked into how and why lottery ticket sales surge with higher unemployment and economic downturns, according to several studies. 

This is not a good sign. You would expect that right now, with inflation being so high and the economy sputtering, that lotto ticket sales would be down, but the opposite is true. In Arizona, lotto ticket sales are up 152% this year, with eye-popping jackpots being a big driver of sales, despite 300 million to 1 odds on the 1.3bn mega millions jackpot. 

Higher inflation is a source of financial anxiety, and another driver for increases in sales, with the promise of a big payout to make their problems go away. The reality is though that the odds are so far out of your favor, that the purchase of the lotto ticket or hitting the casino this weekend is just going to make your financial woes worse. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening! My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the Retirement Quick Tips podcast. 

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance