Tag: #financial

Let’s talk about the lottery vs savings debate

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For any one person who loves to play the lottery, there’s another person who equally loves to chide them for throwing their money away. This is a battle of ideologies.

One says that someone has to win, and if that person is me, then all my fantasies can come true. People who follow this line of thinking will often think of all the ways they’d go about spending, savings, investing, and even giving away some of those winnings.

As hopeful as the first mentality might be, the other way of thinking takes a decidedly more glass half full kind of approach. They will actively argue that the likelihood of that winner being you is astronomically not in your favor. Therefore, by purchasing that ticket you might as well be flushing it down the toilet. Theses people will also follow up by declaring that if you’d put that ticket money in a savings instead, then you’d be better off financially for real.

While both standpoints have their pros and cons, theirs is an argument that will probably never end. However, that leaves us with the question, are either of them actually right? I mean, yeah, you literally can’t win if you don’t play; however it’s equally true that the vast majority of tickets purchased will not result in even a free ticket type win. I guess it ultimately comes down to what makes you happier, the hope of winning, or the knowledge you have money set aside for savings.

I guess one way to test the success of both options would be to run a month long experiment. It would be simple enough. All you’d have to do is 1st, buy however many lotto tickets you normally would throughout the course of the month. Then, once you’ve made your lottery purchase for the week, let’s say you spent $5, you will then also place $5 into an envelope for savings. The next time you purchase lottery tickets you do the same thing, and so on, for a month. Then, at the end of the month look at how playing the lotto made you feel vs. how still having the money in the envelope does. Perhaps this is how we can finally figure out which path works best for us individually.

So, how about it, are you game to try? If you do, please leave a comment below, and tell us how it went.

Time for a little recycling precaution

Imagine of a credit card
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Recycling as a practice has its pros and cons. We’ve all been hearing recently about how only a fraction of what we send out to be recycled ever actually is, but to not even try isn’t an option either. While the variety of arguments we could go through regarding this topic are plentiful, that’s not what we’re here to talk about today. Nope, instead we need to talk about identity theft.

Now before you hit the back button, and double check that you clicked on the right article link, hear me out. Hopefully, everyone is aware that before certain types of paperwork can go into the recycling bin (such as financial or medical papers) it needs to be shredded first (the tinier the cross-cut the better). This is especially true for those annoying, unsolicited credit card applications that we all keep getting in the mail.

Usually you would just have to shred the intro letter and the application, and the shiny brochure and outer envelope didn’t have to be first put through the machine (saving you some time, and the wear-and-tear on your shredder). Sadly, that is no longer the case. Thanks to the enthusiastic adoption of QR codes, now the whole thing probably needs to be sliced and diced.

If you take the time to look through some of those credit card packets (and let’s face it, they’re usually the thickest envelopes anyone receives these days), you’ll see QR codes on a majority of the pages. This can often include the shiny brochure too, and occasionally even the outer envelope. If you’re lucky, that might just be a generic code that goes to a blank application when you scan it. However, to make the application process easier, some of those codes will link to a very personalized (and partially filled out) application instead.

Thanks to that, you can’t risk just tossing any part of the packet anymore. Instead, to safeguard yourself from identity theft threats, you have to make sure you shred anything that looks like an application, has a QR code on it, or has a personalized web address for you to use (which is basically the address that the QR code contains, but it’s just typed out for you instead).

Nope, the thing to do is simply shred it all if you have to. Yes, there’s supposed to be a way to stop getting the solicitations in the first place, but if you’re like me, you just haven’t found the time to go through the process yet. If you’re determined to get it done now though, ironically you’ll be able to find that info in tiny little letters in the packet too. It’ll just be considerably harder to read. Good luck Everyone, and have a Happy 4th of July!