Save your money

Throughout the years, we’ve repeatedly preached in our Healthy Finance section not to foolishly throw your money away. Sure, we’d all love to win the lottery and spend the rest of our lives on an endless vacation. But shelling out your hard-earned dollars on lottery tickets is a complete waste of money. Your odds of winning Powerball are 1 in 292 million, according to lotteryusa.com. For comparison’s sake, here are some occurrences that are more likely to happen:

• If you live to be 80, your odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 15,300, according to the National Weather Service. 
• Your odds of dying from a shark attack are 1 in 3,748,067, according to the International Shark Attack File database. 
• Your odds of becoming a movie star are 1 in 1,190,000, according to William Morrow’s “The Book of Odds.”
• If you’re an amateur golfer, your chances of hitting a hole-in-one are 1 in 12,500, according to 60-year data collected by Golf Digest magazine. 
• You have a 1-in-200,000 chance of giving birth to conjoined twins, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center. 
• Your odds of dying of a bee sting are 1 in 6 million, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. 
• Your odds of hitting a royal flush in the game Texas Hold ’Em are 1 in 649,740, according to pokerking.com. 
• Your odds of playing on the Professional Golfers Association Tour are 1 in 326,000, according to the PGA Tour Media.