Last year on July 7 I started an experiment to buy a Lotto ticket every month picking the same numbers and see if it was a worthwhile investment.

I set up an auto-buy on mylotto.co.nz for 4 lines at $1.50 per line, playing the Powerball every Saturday. I picked a bunch of numbers based on friends’ birthdays and things like that.

Overall the experiment cost $312 ($6 x 52 weeks).

Over the year I won 4 times. One of them was a $15 win. The others were bonus ticket wins. Because a bonus ticket is worth $3.20, you could say those wins were worth $9.60.

So total winnings were $24.60.

Over one year that’s a total return of -92.1%.

Not great!

Here’s how much I would have if I had put this in other investments over the same time period:

• Lotto: $24.60 (-92.1%)
• 2% term deposit at NZ bank: $316.10 (+1.3%)
• Dow Jones: $325.2 (+4.2%)
• Bitcoin: $700.88 (+124.6%)

Just another fun experiment. Lesson: Don’t play Lotto.

BM