Lottery Group Clubs – when to join and when to avoid them!
We are asked by several subscribers if we recommend joining a lottery club. A lottery club is where several people pull their money together to buy a bunch of tickets with the plan of fairly distributing the winnings.
It’s a fun idea and a lot of people think it increases their odds of winning because they have more money to buy more tickets.
But with MORE money comes MORE responsibility!
We only recommend joining a lottery club under very specific conditions:
- It’s really well organized
- You completely trust the person running it.
- Someone audits the purchases and winnings
If the person running the club isn’t someone you completely trust, then avoid the club. If you don’t personally know the leader of the club, do not join it. If there aren’t written down, signed rules of how the club operates, avoid it.
If the person buying the tickets doesn’t show you the tickets before the drawing OR before scratching off the tickets (for instant games), avoid the club.
If you can’t be bothered with auditing the money collected, and auditing the tickets purchased and the winners and losers, then a lottery club isn’t for you.
Why? It’s easy to swap out a winning ticket with a losing one.
Could you imagine if 10 people put their money into a pool and the person responsible for buying the ticket shows you all the losing tickets AFTER the drawing, buy then, they suddenly disappear from work a month later with someone in their family having mysteriously won the same lottery? Maybe their family member legitimately bought a winning ticket, or maybe your winner was swapped with a losing ticket? The suspicion is immediately clear and unavoidable.
Now, if you still want to join one AND you want to stay friends with everyone involved, the club needs to be 100% transparent. Go into the club with the idea that you’ve already won and put the rules and procedures in place for everyone to get their share. HOW?
- Create a name for the club & identify everyone who is in the club.
- Appoint one person as the money collector. They have to keep a detailed list of everyone they collected money from for that week. Ideally, they post that list on a shared document (think google docs) and invite everyone from the club to be able to see that list.
- Appoint a DIFFERENT PERSON in the club to go buy the tickets and date the purchase and put the clubs name on the back of every ticket in INK.
- Appoint a 3rd person to copy or take pictures of the bought tickets before the drawing (for pick games) or before they’re scratched (for instant games). The person is also responsible to make sure the total amount of the tickets purchased equals the total amount of the money collected. The pictures or photocopies should be sent to everyone in the club before the drawing or the scratching.
- Get the club together and have fun during the drawing OR when you’re scratching the ticket! If you can’t get everyone together, if you’ve documented everything in steps 1-4 above, you’re all covered for when you win!
Having all of this in place protects everyone in the club and makes sure no one loses any friends!