Couple nets $475,500 payday off $3 scratch card — nearly a decade after winning $1.8 million in Canadian lottery: ‘If you don’t play, you don’t win’

But the Lados never stopped buying scratch tickets, even after their big win. And, fast forward eight years later, the couple has won again: this time, $475,497 (CA$675,000) from a $2.80 (CA$4) Scratch ‘N Win ticket.

“We play but modestly, especially now, but if you don’t play, you don’t win,” Edward said in a news release from Atlantic Lottery.

The odds are not in your favor

Despite this streak of luck, the odds of winning the lottery are near zero. For example, the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are one in 292 million. And, while the odds of winning any prize is one in 24.87, you’re more likely to only walk away with the money you spent on the ticket — than hit the jackpot.

In comparison, the odds of being struck by lightning in the U.S. is one out of 15,000 over the course of an 80-year lifespan, according to the National Weather Service.

Most of us don’t spend much (or any) time worrying about whether we’ll be struck by lightning. Yet, many people still think they can eventually win the lottery, if they keep at it. After all, some people do win — like the Lados.

This is known as the gambler’s fallacy, a belief that past random events influence future random events — like someone playing the same numbers over and over in the lottery, because those numbers are due to show up eventually. But this is a fallacy.

“No matter how often a number is drawn, it’s just as likely to be drawn in the future. There are no patterns, making it impossible to predict the outcome of future drawings,” according to an article from The University of Texas Permian Basin. “You can pick the same ‘lucky’ numbers each week or select numbers at random. It makes no difference.”

But this hasn’t stopped people from taking their chances. In fiscal year 2024, U.S. lottery sales totaled more than $113.3 billion, with Florida and California leading the way, according to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries (NASPL).

How this could impact your retirement

About 40 million households are habitual players, “accounting for 80% of the spending and representing about $2,500 of annual lottery spending by each of these households,” according to Elm Research. “The households are mostly in the lowest quartile of household income, so this $2,500 often represents a material fraction of their discretionary income.”

The researchers point out that spending $2,500 on lottery tickets every year “greatly reduces their expected lifetime financial welfare.” For example, if you’re 35 years from retirement and put $2,500 a year into a retirement account, that “could support a $15,000 real annual annuity from age 65.”

The legalization of online sports betting across several U.S. jurisdictions is also putting pressure on future retirement savings.

While the chance of winning a sports bet may be higher than winning the Powerball jackpot, “the research shows that the hundreds of billions of dollars that consumers pour into online sports betting overwhelmingly come from money that used to be spent on more stable, long-term investments, like retirement accounts,” according to KelloggInsight, a magazine of research from the faculty of the Kellogg School of Management.

It’s also led to affiliated spending on cable TV, restaurants and other forms of entertainment, according to researchers. Overall, this leads to “decreased credit availability, increased credit-card debt and a higher incidence of overdrawing from bank accounts.”

Perhaps most concerning, these effects “were particularly acute among households that were least able to afford it, pushing them even deeper into debt.”

Doing the math

Say you spend $2.80 (CA$4) a week on a scratch ticket. That’s $146.50 (CA$208) a year. While that doesn’t sound like much, over 20 years that would add up to $2,930.50 (CA$4,160). If you were to invest that money each year at a 7% annual rate of return (compounded monthly), you’d have between $7,000 and $10,000.