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Anyone ever won anything on the Lottery?
- Thread starter dianestory2
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I bought a ticket the first time it hit that the Powerball lotto hit that first crazy amount back in 2011 or 2012 (which it has since surpassed a couple of times). Even odds of # of players vs. probability of guessing numbers aside, it always seems people in ho-dunk towns in the middle of nowhere wins.
No one from downtown Chicago (old residence) or suburban Detroit/Ann Arbor (current) ever win anything big it seems from my totally objective and unresearched opinion.
No one from downtown Chicago (old residence) or suburban Detroit/Ann Arbor (current) ever win anything big it seems from my totally objective and unresearched opinion.
Depends on how you play. One of the jackpots here is currently over $200 million. I don't mind dropping $5 on it when it's that high. In my case, it's a very small waste of money.
I buy one ticket to the Powerball and Mega Millions each drawing. That amounts to 4 tickets each week at a cost of $12 per week or $624 per year.
The running joke is that the best way for you to win is look at my tickets and pick the numbers that my auto pick didn't. I have had so many tickets where I didn't get a single number.
The running joke is that the best way for you to win is look at my tickets and pick the numbers that my auto pick didn't. I have had so many tickets where I didn't get a single number.
I don't really play that often. I once won $20, but that's about it. (I've maybe used 20 scratch offs in my life, so if they were a dollar a piece, I'm about breaking even.)
Won 50k on my 21st birthday. Grandma bought me a stack of scratchers. Top prize was $77,777. I got the 50k after taxes.
Spent about half of it bailing my mom out of debt on her business and the rest on college. And that is the story of how I spent 8 years in college before I had to get a job.
Spent about half of it bailing my mom out of debt on her business and the rest on college. And that is the story of how I spent 8 years in college before I had to get a job.
Over twenty years ago, a very good wine store - which has since closed - inheritance stuff - had a one off Christmas raffle.
The prizes were all pretty impressive but the first prize - which I didn't even dare read - was a crate of well over £300 - at that time - worth of really serious wines (this was Christmas 1992). All from serious French vineyards. All - as I subsequently discovered - with those insanely subdued and understated labels that you only get on the really excellent wines.
I remember buying one - only one - ticket, and having an odd feeling that I'd win something.
On Christmas Eve, I was phoned with the news that I won the first prize. The fact of the phone call didn't surprise me - I had had an odd feeling that I'd win one of the prizes, but thought I'd win the third one (which was a generous selection of a few pretty good wines). And, I would have been more than happy with that.
However, the fact that I had won the first prize stupefied me. There were wines on that list which were worth more than my weekly salary as a junior university teacher at that time.
The prizes were all pretty impressive but the first prize - which I didn't even dare read - was a crate of well over £300 - at that time - worth of really serious wines (this was Christmas 1992). All from serious French vineyards. All - as I subsequently discovered - with those insanely subdued and understated labels that you only get on the really excellent wines.
I remember buying one - only one - ticket, and having an odd feeling that I'd win something.
On Christmas Eve, I was phoned with the news that I won the first prize. The fact of the phone call didn't surprise me - I had had an odd feeling that I'd win one of the prizes, but thought I'd win the third one (which was a generous selection of a few pretty good wines). And, I would have been more than happy with that.
However, the fact that I had won the first prize stupefied me. There were wines on that list which were worth more than my weekly salary as a junior university teacher at that time.
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One of my siblings used to play the NYS weekly lotteries. He won a second prize once and generously gifted me a couple of dry wells strategically added in front of my septic system's leach field. Not glamorous but definitely appreciated.
I haven't played lotteries in years but another sibling talked me into buying 67c worth of a ticket this weekend. So far I don't feel any compelling urge to go further down that path again. I'd rather spend it at the grocery store on summer produce at winter prices...
I haven't played lotteries in years but another sibling talked me into buying 67c worth of a ticket this weekend. So far I don't feel any compelling urge to go further down that path again. I'd rather spend it at the grocery store on summer produce at winter prices...
January 1993, @Apple fanboy, January 1993; the raffle - or draw - occurred on Christmas Eve 1992.
Anyway, to answer your question, perhaps, surprisingly, yes, they did.
This is because these wines were so good that I tended to reserve them for special occasions. This wasn't everyday drinking plonk. And, I had to make it clear to my parents that these were not to be given out to casual friends or guests of theirs. (My mother had a really tiresome habit of remembering that she needed to bring a bottle somewhere just as she was heading out the door, so she would always ask me - at the very last minute - to furnish her with one. Refusal was not an option, so, she always got a bottle, - but not one of the excellent ones - but a different destiny awaited the very good French wines in that prize.)
So, for my own postgrad degrees, my brother's BA (he had returned to university as a 'mature' student) and later, his LL.B. were all celebrated with a bottle from what had begun to be described as - even then, - and something that was probably prompted by that event - what has since become called 'my cellar'. So, 'special occasions', or maybe an Easter dinner, and an occasional Christmas dinner; or, a social birthday - sometimes mine, the wines tended to be reserved for those sort of events.