When Daniel Richard offered me a review copy of his new ebook, Breaking the Gambling Addiction, I wasn’t sure if I was going to review it. That’s just because I try to stick to topics that are (1) within my realm of competence, and (2) applicable to most of the people I’m writing for. Gambling addiction is neither of those.

But when I thought about it, I realized that I really did need to tell people about it. Because while most people aren’t addicted to gambling, it’s a devastating problem for those who are.

2-3% of U.S. adults are considered problem gamblers, and 1% are considered pathological gamblers. In addition to the obvious financial problems gamblers face, there’s a strong link between gambling addiction and problems with drugs, alcohol, and smoking, as well as depression and suicide.

People email me questions about all kinds of things – goal setting, finance, psychology, spirituality, math, blogging, copyright law, etc. And if I don’t happen to know the answer personally, I like to at least be able to point them in the right direction. So now I’m ready for anyone who may ask me how to break a gambling addiction.

I’ve always been very anti-gambling. I tell people that when I went to Atlantic City, I learned my lesson the hard way by losing 650 simoleons (by which I mean $6.50). When I later went to Las Vegas, I’m not sure if I gambled at all. It just doesn’t seem appealing to me.

Therefore, I don’t pretend to have any business telling people how they can overcome a gambling addiction. I think the best people to help with that would be either a psychologist, counselor, etc. who has helped people break their addiction, or somebody who has broken their own. Daniel Richard is the latter.

He placed his first bet at 16 (below the legal age), got hooked, and got to the point where he was stealing money to sustain his habit. Then he found out how to break his addiction, and he hasn’t looked back.

Here’s the table of contents:

• Introduction

Part 1: My Story

• Chapter 1 – Curiosity
• Chapter 2 – I Won! Winning My 1st Bet
• Chapter 3 – Getting Hooked
• Chapter 4 – Controlling The Urge For A Gamble
• Chapter 5 – The Dry Spell
• Chapter 6 – And I Stole
• Chapter 7 – Where’s My Conscience?

Part 2: Lessons Learned

• Chapter 8 – 11 Self-Approval Lies on Gambling
• Chapter 9 – Why We Gamble?
• Chapter 10 – “I Can Stop”
• Chapter 11 – 4 Factors In Gambling
• Chapter 12 – Gambling: An Exchange of Money for More Money To Spend?
• Chapter 13 – 6 Thinking Traps of Money Making Through Gambling
• Chapter 14 – Funding Gambling As A Channel To Making More Money
• Chapter 15 – The Chase For Uncertainty
• Chapter 16 – “Everything We Do Is A Gamble”
• Chapter 17 – Uncertainty: High Risk = High Returns?
• Chapter 18 – The Art of The Gamble
• Chapter 19 – Gambling: The System for Easy Money?
• Chapter 20 – The Wolves Know The Code To Your Wallets

Part 3: Breaking Free

• Chapter 21 – The Preparation
• Chapter 22 – Habits vs Addictions
• Chapter 23 – Knowing Your Motivation
• Chapter 24 – 7 Tips To Quitting The Gambling Addiction
• Chapter 25 – You Don’t Need Any Psychological Hacks to Breaking Free
• Chapter 26 – The One Thought That Changed My Life
• Chapter 27 – After Change: Are You Leaving Behind A Legacy?
• Chapter 28 – Dealing With The Gambling Addictions of Loved Ones
• Acknowledgments

He also has a sneak preview available on his site. Know someone with a problem? Give them more than encouragement. Give them Breaking the Gambling Addiction.

The other day, I heard some people talking about their dreams of winning the lottery. They decided they’d really need to win the big money, because if they only won $2 million or so as a lump sum after taxes, that wouldn’t be enough to retire.

Their reasoning was that if they got 5% interest on $2 million, that would be $100,000 a year of taxable income. But that’s like a normal salary, not enough for the lavish retirement they have in mind. So how can you retire on only $2 million?

Aside from the ridiculous odds of winning that much money in the lottery, their logic isn’t quite right. You can get more than a 5% rate of return, and also you’re not limited to spending only the returns (you can spend the initial $2 million too).

But the basic idea is right: what may sound like a lot of money isn’t so much when you need it to support your big spending plans for the rest of your life.

Whenever someone asks if $x is enough to retire, the answer is always no. Because if you were planning to live within your means and spend money at an indefinitely sustainable rate, you wouldn’t have to ask.

If you have to ask, what you’re really wondering is “Since my desires will expand completely out of control with my unrestrained greed and carelessness, is this so much money that I can’t possibly screw it up?” No, it never is.

I remember when Michael Vick got his 6 year, $62 million contract in 2001. Everyone wondered how he could possibly spend it all. Aside from the obvious fact that you don’t have to spend it all, I didn’t see any reason he couldn’t run out of money if he wasn’t careful. Oprah had recently spent $52 million on a single house.

Fast forward 7 years. He had lost his salary and endorsement deals because of the dogfighting scandal. And the bills continued to pile up: steep lawyer fees, 6 luxury homes, and living expenses and 10 cars for friends and family. With no other options, he filed for bankruptcy.

Your retirement could last longer than you think, and you probably won’t have close to $62 million to take you through it. So how can you prevent this from happening to you? It’s pretty simple, actually.

1. Be frugal. It might not be fun and sexy, but it’s by far the most important tip for becoming and remaining financially independent.

2. Don’t stop earning money in retirement. Earning money comes from creating value. Why do you need to stop creating value at a certain age? You might want to change the way you do it, but you don’t need to shut down completely.

Keep these tips in mind, and you can live indefinitely with no savings at all. Ignore them, and no amount of money will ever be enough.

Photo by HomeParking

So it turns out that blogless wonder Scott McIntyre has appeared on 5 game shows in the UK, including “The Weakest Link,” which he won. It reminded me that I hadn’t revealed my top secret game show tips yet. Of course, “top secret” really just means “logical,” but logic seems to be quite rare among many game show contestants (though I haven’t watched any in years, so I never saw ones like “The Weakest Link”).

Without further ado, here are three tips you can’t miss.

1. Don’t try to make the best guess, just make the right guess.

There was one show where two people had to guess how many hours of TV someone watched; whoever came closest won. The first person guessed 10. The second person, knowing the first person’s answer, guessed 5.

The second person was closest because the answer was 1, but guessing 5 was a bad idea. After the first person guessed 10, the only reasonable guesses for the second person were 9 or 11. That’s because the goal isn’t to get as close as possible to the right answer, but just to get closer than the other person. If you leave any room between your guesses, there’s a chance that the answer will be in between them, and the other person might be closer.

This doesn’t apply to The Price Is Right, where you lose if you go over. In that situation, it makes perfect sense to guess far below someone else, even $1.

2. When only one basket can win, put all your eggs in it.

There was another show where two people are asked a question, and they each answer true or false (they can both give the same answer). If someone’s right, they take a step forward. Three steps forward and they win.

In this case, the first person just needed to get one more question right to win, and the second person was further behind. On the next question, the first person makes a guess. What should the second person do?

Well, there’s only one thing they can do: guess the opposite of whatever the first person says. The only way they can win is if the first person gets all the remaining questions wrong, so they have to run with that.

Guessing the same answer as the first person doesn’t help when they’re ahead and just need one more to win. Either both people are wrong and nothing happens, or they’re both right and the first person wins. So the second person should just guess the opposite and hope the first person is wrong. It’s their only chance.

3. Don’t share lottery jackpots.

OK, the lottery isn’t a game show, but it’s like a game show in that you can influence the results. No, you can’t control your chances of winning–that’s completely random, and no “system” will change that. However, you can control the chances of having to split the jackpot with someone else in the event that you do win.

You do this by picking some numbers that other people don’t pick. This means numbers above 31, because people use birthdays and anniversaries to pick numbers. Then if your ticket is the one in 175 million that wins, you’re less likely to find that someone else has chosen those same numbers.

Better yet, don’t play the lottery.

Yes, that’s right, I won the lottery! Specifically, the Christmas Day drawing of Mega Millions. I matched one number plus the mega ball number to win $3.

Obviously, this is not a life changing sum, but it’s a good opportunity to reflect on my thoughts about the lottery.

I received ten $1 lottery tickets as a Christmas present. Seven of these tickets didn’t match any numbers. Two of them matched one number, but that doesn’t pay anything. And one of them matched one number plus the mega ball number, for a $3 payout.

Since the tickets were a gift, the $3 is pure profit. If I had bought the $1 ticket myself, it would have been a $2 profit. If I had bought all ten tickets myself, it would have been a $7 loss.

Two of the numbers on the winning ticket were only one off from a match. But even if I had been lucky enough to match three numbers and the mega ball, it would have only paid $150. A nice little bonus, but not much considering the chances of it happening are 1 in 13,781.

We all know the odds in the lottery are against us, but sometimes we forget just how much. The smallest significant prize is $10,000, and the odds of winning it are 1 in 689,065. This is less likely than the chances of being dealt a royal flush (1 in 649,739).

The smallest prize that could be considered life changing is $250,000, and the odds are 1 in 3,904,701. This is less likely than the chances that you’ll spot a UFO today (3,000,000 to 1).

The jackpot was $16 million, and the odds of winning it were 1 in 175,711,536. I wish I knew the odds up digging up $16 million worth of gold in your backyard.

The overall odds of winning any prize are 1 in 40. This is almost negligible compared to the odds of winning a prize on a hand of blackjack, which are roughly 1 in 2. Blackjack seems like a brilliant investment, by comparison.

Despite the odds, I think playing the lottery is OK if you see it as entertainment. If the fun and anticipation is worth $1 to you whether you win or not, then by all means do it. We all have entertainment expenses. Some lotteries supposedly support education, so if that’s true (and that’s a big “if”), and you want to support education, then that effectively reduces the cost of your entertainment.

But to me it’s not worth it. If I bought a $1 ticket, my fear of losing that dollar would be greater than the thrill of winning a modest prize.

I know this because I once participated in a Super Bowl pool at work (for the fun and camaraderie), paying $10 and winning a $100 payout for being randomly assigned numbers that matched the last digits of the scores at the end of the third quarter. The $90 profit was a nice feeling, but no match for my concern about losing $10.

The risk of the lottery dwarfs the risk of buying some stocks or starting a business. Any remotely reasonable investment is way, way more likely to pay off than the lottery, where a 100% loss is nearly certain on any given ticket. You’re also likely to learn something from the experience when you invest in something you have some control over. And people who win lottery jackpots are likely to lose it all.

Don’t invest in games of pure chance, invest in things that matter.