Playing lotteries messes with your mind

not just talking about lowincome individuals who could use the money in better ways.

The lottery is all about imagining that you will win big so you can be happier with your life.

You do need money to live, but the source of your unhappiness isn’t just a shortage of funds. For example, in my experience, many couples think they’re fighting about money or the lack of it. But the unconscious source of their arguments often stems from issues in their childhoods.

Maybe you grew up poor, so now you’re a spendthrift because you never want to be without again. But your spending frustrates your frugal spouse, so you think winning the lottery will fix the issue. It won’t. Even with more clothes, you’ll still be unhappy because there’s a hole in your soul no closet full of garments can fill.

• It sells a shortcut to growing your money.

Spend a couple of dollars for a winning lottery ticket, and you don’t have to figure out how to be a good investor. The winner of a billion-dollar lottery will never have to worry about inflation.

You, on the other hand, need to be very concerned about inflation. I’ve found that many people don’t even understand what inflation is or how it affects their buying power in the future. Back here in reality, you have to invest in a way to at least keep pace with inflation.

• When you lose, you console yourself by believing that all big lottery winners will end up worse off than you in the long run.

Yes, some lottery winners squander their winnings in spectacular fashion, but not as many as you might think. A working paper out of the National Bureau of Economic Research surveyed a large sample of lottery players in Sweden and “found little evidence in support of the hypothesis that winners often consume frivolously following a win.”

The National Endowment for Financial Education issued a release this year disputing that it’s the source of an often-quoted statistic that 70 percent of lottery winners end up bankrupt just a few years after receiving their windfall.

The reality is you’re more likely to waste the increases in your income over the years. Financial fragility is linked not just to having too few assets but also to having too much debt and lacking financial literacy, the report said.