Love of lotteries used to encourage savings

B

Buffalo

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Time to quit beating your head against the wall of probability, frustrated by the millions of lottery players who take the short end of the odds every time.

A new program, Save To Win, rewards those who deposit funds in some savings and loans with a chance to win a drawing in the Michigan Savings Raffle. The grand prize is $100,000 and there are other monthly cash prizes.

The money customers deposit still draws interest, albeit not quite what they could enjoy elsewhere. The key, though, is that they are saving money, until recently a very rare behavior in our country.

According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) in 2005, Americans were saving .4% of their income. An expert it consulted says that, when stimulus money is removed from the totals, we still are only putting .9% of our income in the bank.

If this program successfully inspires people to save by offering them a chance to win a prize, I'd suggest next allowing S&Ls to install slot machines in their lobbies. Customers could make their deposit, one coin at a time, which would flow from the machine right into their accounts. By gathering a tiny percentage of the interest on its customer's accounts, the S&L could afford to pay out a jackpot on that rare occasion that the fruits line up.

Now that's an ATM I'd enjoy.


Love of lotteries used to encourage savings
 
That would be fun. I wonder how much lower the interest would be though.
 
Your slot machine idea is interesting. I like it.

A local BP owner is running a game of sorts. People were given tickets for a few weeks when they made purchases, the store is now picking a number every Monday for $100.00 in free gasoline.
The sad part of this is that in 6 weeks no one has come forward to claim their gasoline prize. Station workers were cleaning tickets up off the parking lot as people would just throw them down with their receipts and trash.
Amazing, who wouldn't want $100.00 in gasoline.
 
Sounds like a good program.

I worked retail for 25 years and what makes me sick is seeing people spend hundreds of dollars a week trying to win the big one and never do. They may win some amount of money, but that's pretty much all I ever see. Some win thousands, but in my years in retail, none of the stores I worked in ever had a customer that hit the jackpot.

It's always the "other" stores.

Yiz
 
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