Here's What Virginia Spends On Lottery Games And Why We Shouldn’t

VIRGINIA — The odds of winning the lottery are abysmally low. So low, in fact, you’re more likely to be struck by lightning, crushed by a meteor, or hit by falling airplane debris than to be holding the record-breaking $1.6 billion Mega Millions ticket Tuesday night.

But that won’t deter many in Virginia from buying boatloads of one-way tickets to wealth. We spend on average $293.73 a year on lottery tickets, just under the national average of $313, according to a new report from the personal finance website MoneyWise.com.

The chances you wake up Wednesday with a billion dollars is freakisly low at 1 in 303 million, according to the report published Sunday, and 1 in 292 for Powerball. And some states spend a lot more on the lottery than others. In fact, the average adult in some states spends as much as two or three times the national average.

SEE ALSO: $1.6B Mega Millions Record Jackpot 'Exciting Time' For Players

Here are the top 10 states in lottery spending, as well as how much each adult shells out on average.

1. Massachusetts, $977.71
2. West Virginia, $741.40
3. Rhode Island, $643.54
4. Delaware, $548.13
5. New York, $539.63
6. Georgia, $529.71
7. New Jersey, $449.22
8. Maryland, $413.71
9. Connecticut, $413.05
10. South Carolina, $396.99

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MoneyWise.com noted its unwise to buy up lottery tickets in the hopes of striking it rich overnight. Instead, you should put that money into stocks where you’d see “fairly sizable returns.” Americans spent a collective $72.7 billion on lottery tickets in 2016. Had everyone simply pooled their money together and put it into stocks that year, it would’ve grown to just under $99 billion by the end of 2017.

To put it in individual terms, had the average American invested that $313 rather than spend it on lottery tickets, the authors estimated it would’ve turned into more than $425 by the end of 2017.

"When you invest, you're benefiting from compound interest — you're giving your money a chance to grow, and then for those gains to grow, and so on," wrote Mike Allen, portfolio manager at Wealthsimple.

And if that doesn’t convince you to avoid that shiny golden ticket, maybe this will: Researchers at the Stockholm University and New York University found that while you’ll feel more satisfied in life with oodles of cash, you probably won’t be happier.

“Life satisfaction” refers to how people feel about the quality of their lives overall, whereas ‘happiness’ measured respondents’ day-to-day feelings, Robert Ostling, an associate professor at Stockholm University, told MarketWatch. “Our results suggest it is more difficult to affect happiness than life satisfaction,” he said.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

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