Buying scratch-off lottery tickets might not be the best use of a person’s cash, but since there’s little chance that everyone is going to cease playing their lucky numbers, many states are smartly dedicating a portion of money earned from lottery proceeds to vital programs.
In Colorado, for example, the state lottery funds bike and hiking trail maintenance, parks and recreation construction and maintenance, wilderness education for kids and more. New Jersey’s lottery benefits a variety of schools and education programs. And Missouri legislators recently proposed that lottery funds be dedicated to helping veterans.
Missouri State Representative Sheila Solon decided to sponsor the amendment when she learned that the state’s Veterans Commission was operating at a loss. “The lottery ticket would be one way that we could cover shortfalls for our veterans homes, to help with the upkeep of our veterans’ cemeteries, and also to restore full funding for the outreach programs which are so important for our veterans,” Solon told Linda Ong of Ozarks First.
The amendment proposed that those playing the game of risk be given the option to buy a special veterans ticket, which would generate funds for the Veterans Commission Capital Improvement Fund. Currently, lottery funds benefit education in the state.
Ong spoke with one local veteran, John Dismer, who disagreed with the idea. “It’s going to take away from education, because there’s only so many dollars in the lottery system, so you’re going to take some of it away. Now if the education system was real fat and everything, that might be alright. But I don’t think it is.”
In a close vote, many Missouri voters agreed with him — on August 6, 55 percent of voters rejected the amendment.
But this probably isn’t the last we’ll hear of this funding idea. After all, since 2006, a veterans lottery ticket in Illinois has generated $11,000,000 for that state’s former service members.
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Watch What Happens When a Homeless Man “Wins” the Lottery
With the popularity of the television series Candid Camera, Punk’d, and Da Ali G Show, it goes without saying that people like practical jokes.
In fact, Magic of Rahat has made a living with his popular prank videos on YouTube. Most of the time, his mischievous acts are at the expense of the people caught on camera (all in good fun, of course). But on Tuesday, the Internet personality put his pranks to rest and published a heartwarming video that changed the life of a local homeless man and brought Rahat to tears.
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For a few weeks, Rahat noticed a homeless man hanging around a shopping center near his house. “From what people have told me, he’s a nice and respectable guy,” he said in the video. So instead of just giving him a buck or two, Rahat decided to give him a “winning” lottery ticket. Of course, the ticket wasn’t really a winner, but Rahat got a convenience store clerk to play along to give the homeless man his special prize: $1,000 in cash.
“You’re kidding me right?” the man said. “Come on man, you’ve got to be kidding me!” After his disbelief wore off, the man counted the money, turned around and tried to hand half of it back to Rahat, saying, “I want to share it, my friend.” The heartwarming exchange that followed is just the stuff that viral Internet videos are made of. Be sure to grab a tissue before watching. You’ll need it.
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How to Get People to Save When All They Want to Do Is Play the Lottery
What if every time you played the lottery, you couldn’t lose? Well we don’t want to get your hopes up. Like most forms of gambling, your odds of striking gold in a traditional lottery are terrible. Consider Powerball, one of the country’s most popular games: your chances of winning are about one in 175.2 million — good luck with that. But 34 banks and credit unions in four states are experimenting with a different way to entice people to save money instead of wagering it on scratch tickets. With “Save to Win” programs, every $25 that a customer deposits into a special account (up to 10 deposits a month) earns them an entry in a small monthly prize drawing, as well as a yearly grand prize. Even if members don’t win one of the “sweepstakes” — American banks aren’t allowed to run raffles or lotteries — they get to keep all the money they put in, plus interest.
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Prizes and rules for prize-based savings programs vary by credit unions and states, but monthly drawings can range from $10 to $100, and the grand prize can be up to $10,000 — no small sum for customers who struggle to scrap together a valid emergency fund. Save to Win was first launched in 2008 at eight credit unions in Michigan with the help of Doorways to Dreams, an organization that works with federal and state governments to allow banks to offer prize-linked savings, along with Michigan Credit Union League, the Center for Financial Services Innovation and the Filene Research Foundation. These groups designed how the program would run, and also paid for the administrative costs and the prizes — including 10 grand prizes, totaling $100,000.
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Save to Win was an immediate success at Communicating Arts Credit Union in Detroit, where about 800 people — an eighth of their members — signed up, each saving an average of $300 extra. “I was struggling. I had tried lots of different things to get people to save,” Hank Hubbard, the credit union’s president and chief executive, told the New York Times, saying he even offered a certificate of deposit with 10 percent interest with a minimum deposit of $500 to encourage saving. “But our members can’t scrape together $500.” While the number of participants at Hubbard’s bank has dropped over the years, mostly due to the recession, the program still has between 500 and 600 accounts.
Now, D2D is trying another way to get people to “play to save.” The organization is developing a savings card, which can be sold at corner stores next to lottery tickets. For $15, customers can buy one of these cards and register an account online where they can add more cards as they buy them. These accounts would be held by the state in either personal or pooled bank accounts. Customers would be able to withdraw funds, while also being eligible to win prizes for as many cards as they purchase. D2D hopes to have a state pilot this program in 2015, giving people another way to win the lottery, without risking their savings.
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