Budget Bonanza!

It's Friday morning and I'm fresh out of bagels, which can only mean one thing: taking a trip to Giant Tiger to stock up.

Actually, it means two things: another opportunity to buy some scratch tickets.

My last round with them was alright. I had cashed in $24 worth of winners, doubled down by buying a few more, which ended up winning me $15 in the end.

So, you could say I was down $9 - that's one way to look at it. But that's not how a die-hard optimist like Mr. Lucky Duck views the world.

Nah, that $15 meant I was still in the game.

So, I loaded up my cart with all the essentials - bread, bagels, two hefty bags of chocolate chips, and some cat litter that was on sale (yet another win!)

And after the cashier was about done scanning them, I had him ring up some more lottery scratchers for me.

There are a lot of ways you can blow $15 here.

A traditionalist might go for the Lotto 6/49 draw or the Lotto Max, but that's not really my speed.

I was tempted to go for the bigger scores, like a $10 round of 10X Blitz or maybe a trio of Set For Lifes.

Instead, it's the budget ones that were calling my name. Perhaps I had spent too long browsing the discounts in the store or staring at the low price tags on Giant Value knock-off breakfast cereals, but anything more than a $2 or $3 scratcher felt like an obscene luxury.

My first instinct was to get four Flaming 7s, since I've had some decent luck with them recently (nearly broke even!), but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Something about asking for four of the same one felt obscene, like I was really over-indulging in a way that would surely make the Giant Tiger employees feel uncomfortable.

So, I split the purchase - a pair of Flaming 7s and a pair of 2X Blitzes. A decent haul for a low-stakes gambler like myself.

 

You Get What You Pay For

I'm fond of budget scratchers - I really am. But I'm also highly aware of their downsides.

I mean, besides the relatively low prizes - no one becomes a millionaire off these toonie tickets, not unless they invest the jackpot winnings in some kind of savvy enterprise, like whatever tech stock is currently in bubble mode or opening a banana split stand by the beach.

But I can deal with that - I'd be cool just becoming a ten-thousandaire. 

The real bogus aspects are the lightning quick playtimes (even if you scratch slowly, the fun's before it even started) and the low odds. These tickets both have a roughly 1 in 4.5 chance of winning, which means the numbers were stacked against me on this one, even with four goes. 

My chance to win some medium money!

But still, they have their place.

They're a great way to minimize your risks, since you're only wagering $2 at a time (unless you foolishly buy four at once).

What they lack in potential life-changing money, they make up for in month/year-changing money.

Plus they're still enjoyable in their own right - I've already praised the Flaming 7s and its slot machine gameplay, and I'm not taking a single word of it back.

And like I alluded to before, it would be uncouth to roll through Giant Tiger and plunk down a $20 for a Diamond ticket. That's the kind of thing you're only supposed to do at the pharmacy or a gas station.

So, no regrets!

 

Total Payout 

I split the tickets with Mrs. Lucky Duck and before you knew it, we were up zero dollars.

Me and my four tickets were the same - all losers. 

And before you ask: yes, they were all scratched with a toonie. The universe simply wasn't complying today - not for a baller who can afford six packs of bagels and discount cat litter, anyway.

Oh well. That's just the name of the game. You win some and (more often than not) you lose some.

You might be thinking I'm down to nothing now. But you're forgetting I went into this with a $15 win under my belt. So this $8 loss means I'm still up $7.

And if that number isn't a sign that fortune is about to smile upon me, I don't know what is.