Earl's Financial and Economic advice...

Take your gross income, put ten percent in the thankful for the bounty and the blessing, take ten percent and invest in your future (savings, land, stocks, tools, education), live on the remaining eighty percent - which will be attacked by the government for your own and their own good. Always, every payday.

Never borrow money: instead get another job, delay buying, grow up. Every dollar you spend on interest payments for the privilege of borrowing slow you down from success, if you are thinking you should be paying interest when you retire you have no business reading this post. If you think borrowing money for education will make you a faster success, eat lots of ice cream and potatoes and gravy -- when you are fat enough race a mile and see if you come in first.

So you want to buy a lottery ticket, some one has to win. I am lucky, the shredder is beside my desk, when I want to buy tickets I can just put the dollar into the shredder and save all that angst waiting for the winning number on my ticket. Seems my old tickets all got shredded. It does take a bit of time to get smarter.

Look at the average of the Congressmen and President and Judges - and they all spend money they don't have, for things they don't need, with that levy on your income that 'they' say is your fair share.... see? Hope the country has enough time to get smarter.