300 Million Reasons Lottery Tickets Make a Terrible Gift

Florida, like many states, has a commercial that pushes buying lottery tickets as holiday gifts. The ad actually calls scratch-off tickets "the must-get gifts of the season," saying that "pretty much everyone is going to want them."

That may be true -- people probably do want them -- but that doesn't stop them from being a terrible gift. Giving someone a lottery ticket is similar to buying them a carton of cigarettes: It may be what they want, but your present is supporting a bad habit.

Lottery tickets -- whether they're "scratchers" or multistate games like Mega Millions or Powerball -- sell a pipe dream. You spend a dollar, or maybe up to $20, for an instant ticket, and you might win millions. The problem, of course, that the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against you, so playing really amounts to throwing your money away. In fact, the odds of hitting the jackpot are approximately one to 300 million. You'd be better off gifting your loved ones a sure thing, like a gift card with real value or actual cash they can use how they like.

Source Fool.com