How best to budget for your lottery play to keep playing, fun!
We all know, but most don’t practice, that sticking to a budget in our daily lives gives us a running view of the money we have coming in, the money we have spent, the money we intend to spend, and the amounts allocated to all purchases such as food, rent, mortgage, clothing, gas, utilities, etc. Keeping an effective and up to date budget lets us buy what we need and want, without spending more than what is allocated to the purchases. The goal is to keep the budget balanced and not overdrawn, and that includes budgeting your lottery play.
Creating a realistic budget
When creating a budget you need to include all your lottery spending as well. You need to treat your lottery play as just another expenditure from your available funds. If you don’t do this, then you might overspend on the lottery and take out money for it from other budgeted items.
You can set your monthly budget log up manually in a notebook or on your computer. First you will need to make a column labelled BUDGET. Here is where you have determined the maximum amount of money you will spend on lottery tickets each week or month. This should be a realistic figure that takes into account all of your other expenses, and also does not take away anything from them. For some people it might be five dollars per week, for others, fifty dollars per month for some, ten dollars a day. However, once you settle on your lottery budget amount, you must ensure that you do not go over it under any circumstances. The amount allocated for the lottery should be part of your entertainment category in the budget. It is very low on the priority list.
The heading should indicate the current week or month. You will be writing down the amounts you have spent on your weekly or monthly ticket purchases. The next column will be labelled GAME. Here, you will list the name of the game you purchased the tickets for. The next column will be TOTAL SPENT, which will be the total amount spent for that draw date.
At the end of the page you will need to total up the amount you have spent on tickets within that month and ensure it is equal to or below your budgeted amount. If it is higher, even by a dollar then you missed your budget and will have to examine your log to see where you went over-budget so you can correct it for the next draw.
Of course, how you set up your log is up to you but make sure all money spent on lottery tickets is recorded. And like most people, when the lottery jackpot gets up to a very high amount, you might end up buying unbudgeted tickets for those draws. That’s fine, as long as it falls into the lottery budget amount, or, if taking from another expense, ensure the lottery money does not affect that expense more than a few dollars.
If you keep a good budget including a properly updated lottery budget where you ensure you enter it every time you purchase lottery tickets, you will see how much is being spent on them and can judge if you are keeping to the budget, spending below it, or spending above it. If you are spending below it, do not spend more. Being under budget is always a better goal. If you are spending over it, see where the extra money is coming from and reassess the amount you have budgeted for the lottery. The best action here would be to cut back on lottery spending and aim to get back on the entire budget path.