Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background.

Are lottery tickets ever a wise investment provided the jackpot is large enough?
Question: Does a billion dollars make you 1,000 times more happy than a million dollars? Answer: It doesn't.  What counts is not the amount of money, but the subjective improvement that it makes to your life. And that improvement isn't linear, which is way the expected value of the inrease in your happiness / welfare / wellbeing is negative.  The picture changes if you consider that by buying a ticket you can tell yourself for one week "next week I might be a billionaire". What you actually pay for is not the expected value of the win, but one week of hope of becoming rich.