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What did you do this week (and weekend)?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
I bought a lottery ticket.
I do that from time to time. Knowing that the mathematical probability is astronomically low is comforting: it's not zero. Zero is the probability of me having a million dollars in disposable income within my life time. For our generation, negative $10m is a far more realistic probability than positive million.
It's still indefensible though: that could have gone to a charity where it will do actual good work. Or it could have been spent on nutrition and home costs: something worthwhile.
What's worse, being the mega hypocrite that I am, I judge the heck out of other people who spend, say, more than X dollars a month on bingo / lottery / raffles. It has to be "oops I dropped this money on a pile of poo.....oh well moving on" quantity money, not, I could have bought another week's worth of milk and bread and eggs quantity. But that's a totally bs and arbitrary bit of snobbery: I dont feel the same indignation towards the rich wasting their money - mostly only towards the poor "wasting" money doing the same thing I'm doing, which is throwing small disposable amounts into a wishing well.
There was a cool casual thread from last year on lotteries and unlikely prizes. I liked reading that. I think my favorite prize was the amusement park with friends one : that's something I would never pay for even if I had the money for it, but it's exactly the kind of memory that's worth far more than zeros in a bank.