And the rivers ran red with the blood of my bank account in July!
Ah and we were doing so well :)!
I knew July was going to be an expensive month what with a couple of weekends away and also a few big expenses such as car insurance and tax being due, but we also got thwarted by the TFS Mobile (yet again!!!) when we finally decided to take it to the garage. More on that in a bit.
Anyway all told the bottom line this month was….
JACKPOT!!!! Hmm… Maybe not… 🙂
Did you hear the news about the refactoring of the uk lottery format? No?
Do you even play the lottery?
I am guessing the vast majority of financially savvy folk out there do not, but there are still a few of us who soldier on even though the rational choice is always not to play, given that the odds are stacked so massively against you.
However the recent news tells us that the odds of winning are getting even worse!
This could be bad news for many lottery players but I am going to spin it around on it’s head and turn it into some great news for you more rational thinkers out there:
This is the perfect opportunity to finally “get out” of the game!
This is the classic argument that will often get stated when you tell someone they should just stop wasting their money on the lottery. Those that unfortunately “got in” years ago in a foolish moment, perhaps when they were younger and more naive, and hadn’t yet grasped the sheer improbability of the whole thing.
Those who read my monthly expense updates will no doubt have noticed that we do in fact play the national lottery in the TFS household, despite my continued protests, for this very specific reason. However, with those extra 10 numbers making a bit of a mockery on those who have picked their numbers from the original set of 49, kind of destroys this “my numbers” argument IMHO.
So I’m glad to report that Mrs T has finally seen the light and decided to knock it on the head when these changes come into effect in October. Whoo hoo! 🙂
This means we’ll have another £18 per month, or £3,114 compounded over a ten year period to add to our FI stash. So great news all round!
If you know of anyone who is still touting this reason as the one they are still playing, maybe you can send them this post and give them the perfect escape route as well?
And if that reasoning still doesn’t convince them, take a look at this post which works out that your expected return on each £2 ticket you buy is just 61p. Yes that’s right, every time you buy a ticket you might as well just throw £1.39 down the drain and have done with it!!!!
From the horses mouth itself at UK Lottery HQ here are the probabilities of winning on the old format vs the new one:
| Current (6/49) Lotto | Enhanced (6/59) Lotto | |||
| Match | Prize | Odds | Prize | Odds |
| Match 6 | Jackpot | 1 : 13,983,816 | Jackpot | 1 : 45,057,474 |
| Match 5 + Bonus Ball | Estimated £50,000 | 1 : 2,330,636 | Estimated £50,000 | 1 : 7,509,579 |
| Match 5 | Estimated £1,000 | 1 : 55,491 | Estimated £1,000 | 1 : 144,415 |
| Match 4 | Estimated £100 | 1 : 1,033 | Estimated £100 | 1 : 2,180 |
| Match 3 | £25 | 1 : 57 | £25 | 1 : 97 |
| Match 2 | N / A | N / A | Free Lotto Lucky Dip | 1 : 10.3 |
| Raffle Prizes | Guaranteed £20,000 | Guaranteed £1 million & £20,000 prize tiers | ||
| Overall odds of winning a prize | 1 in 54 | 1 in 9.3 | ||
| Overall odds of becoming a millionaire** | 1 in 14 million | 1 in 10 million | ||
Overall odds are rounded to nearest whole number for simplicity. **Overall odds of becoming a millionaire refers to combined odds of winning the Jackpot or £1 million on the Millionaire Raffle in an average week.
Believe it or not, the national lottery is actually trying to spin this in a positive light by focusing on the fact that “Overall odds of winning a prize” and “Overall odds of becoming a millionaire” have dropped ever so slightly.
But let’s face it 1 in 10 million is still a vanishingly small chance to hit millionaire status (especially when you compare it to the tried and tested route of earning more, spending less and investing the difference!) and who ever wanted to win a free Lotto Lucky Dip for fuck’s sake!?
It would be sloppy blogging indeed if I were to write a post about the lottery without including the standard list of things that are more likely to happen to you than winning the lottery, so here goes:
Things that are more likely than winning the “Enhanced Lotto” Jackpot (45,057,474/1):
Things that are more likely than the odds of becoming a millionaire in the “Enhanced Lotto” (10 million to 1):
Things that are more likely than the odds of matching 5 balls to win a paltry ~£1,000 (144,415/1):
Things that are more likely than the odds of “winning a prize” in the Enhanced Lottery (10.3/1):
Sources:
**Ladbrokes
***Paddy Power
****Strange Cosmos – Extra note, I like the “Chance of developing schizophrenia: 1 in 00” on this page. Is that a deliberate typo!? 🙂
Now a few things which are (gladly) more unlikely than winning the new Enhanced Jackpot:
Finally one interesting thing that is much, much more unlikely than winning the uk national lottery is…:
May the odds be ever in your favour! 🙂
Notes:
The Overview
Seeing as I did a 6 month review of our spending in January for the last half of 2014, which was very eye opening indeed, and forced us to really buck our ideas up and put in a few extra measures to track our spending, I thought it would be worth seeing if any of it has actually taken hold and helped out reduce our spending! Spoiler alert for those who can’t be bothered to read through it all: Yes it has! 🙂
As the title alludes to I still think we could have done a lot better, but hey, progress is progress and all that!
The overall figure for the 6 months is…. drum roll purlease 1….
£17,412
This compares to the previous 6 months figure of £24,735 very well. I think it would have been harder to actually spend more than that than reduce it, but the cut of £7,323 is a pretty significant one so I can’t really be anything but happy with this result, I just wish I’d discovered Moneydashboard a bit earlier!
↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Notes:
Do you know this potential Mustachian?!?! 🙂
Seeing as us Financial Independence seekers are generally a modest bunch and tend to keep ourselves to ourselves I often find myself thinking “Hey, this guy could be a Mustachian and neither of us would even know it”.
I’ve therefore invented a game called Mustachian Spotting, whereby I look for behavioural trends that we tend to see in people who are either seeking or have already achieved Financial Independence. And then like a big judgy type person complete with wig and gavel I cast out markings out of 10. It’s great fun, maybe you should try it some time?
To give you an idea on what sort of scores you can dish out there are some examples of potential Mustachians I know below. I’m not actually saying that any of these dudes/dudettes actually read MMM or ERE (and certainly not theFIREstarter! 🙂 ), but they exhibit behaviour that could, I think, mean they more receptive to the ideas of FI, simple living, sustainability, anti-consumerism and ultimately achieving true freedom, than the average Josephine.
How cute is this?! £100k and it’s yours!
On our recent foray to the Wight Isle (no not Ibiza, the one just off the coast of Portsmouth 🙂 ) I noticed there were a few “For Sale” signs around the caravan park we were staying in. This intrigued me so I noted the estate agent name to have a look when we got home. I was then talking with Mrs T last night about possible options (purely theoretically speaking, for the time being at least 😉 ) of how you could go and live in one of the cheaper housing options over there and super charge your retirement plans.
This idea is in no way novel, we all know Jacob lived in an RV to minimize his housing costs and retire early. However it is worth exploring some of the other ideas out there to downsize or otherwise reduce your housing costs. This will not only boost your savings rate but reduce the amount you will need to retire on, because you’ve cut your monthly expenses.
Keeping The Cauldron (UK)
Financially Free By Forty (UK)
Quietly Saving (UK)
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