To start playing the lottery regularly

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Desperate I am.

Cant retire, retirement age is through the roof. Im knackered.

Cant do anything else

So is it foolish to start essentially gambling?

Who plays the lottery these days. Just gone into the website and theres this game, that game, this game that game

And I thought it was still a pound a ticket!!!

Well if you don't enter you can't win.

The odds of winning aren't great. The story goes that you are more likely to get run over going to collect your winnings than you are winning in the first place. I don't know whether this is true.

But there are some things to remember. First is, although winning is improbable, there are more than one prize on offer that might constitute a life changing amount, such as match 5+bonus as well as the jackpot.

Secondly, think about the odds vs return. I don't need the amount of money euromillions would deliver (£stupid) but a lotto win of say £5 million would suit me quite nicely. So going for the extra £50 million with significantly decreased probability of winning makes no sense. You pay a price for greed in that respect.

Sometimes the expected return on your money can exceed the ticket price if there is a rollover or double rollover, although the fact that more people play on these occasions probably negates that.

Ultimately I don't care about the mathematical expectation value and it being a good bet. I doubt whether £26 million would enrich my life much more than £5 million. I would probably just start doing stupid stuff with the money. It would be winning the £million at all that would make the difference, which is what I pay for.

My experience of premium bonds is that the ROI isn't good, and the probability of winning the jackpot is much lower than the lottery. Of course you don't lose the money, but you lose the opportunity cost of not investing your money elsewhere and getting a higher rate of interest return, which in itself can be significant on large amounts.

The lottery is a tax on stupidity and greed!