Those who don't mind dropping some cash on lottery tickets (someone has to win!) end up with a nice stack of useless paper.
But hey, if you don't mind losing that money, why not bet it on the stock market instead?
Sites like Robinhood allow novices to buy a single share of stock for fun and maybe profit. Got $20? For that you could buy one share of stock in a cruise ship company, a nuclear energy startup, or even Nintendo. Then you can watch it grow — or drop, which is always a possibility as well.
But the point is that a small sum of money you might have lost on the lottery could instead purchase a share in a company you like. Over time, you'll learn a lot about markets as you watch some stocks fall and others rise in value.
Stanford economist Saumitra Jha and his young son invest a few dollars every week as a way to learn about investments and what factors (like elections, pandemics, or inflation) drive company valuations. He wrote in Insights by Stanford Business that he encourages parents to play the stock game with kids because it helps kids focus on the future.
The truth is it could be fun for anyone with $10 to spend — and much more useful than the lottery. Plus, when everyone else is complaining about the economy, you can be buying low, and later, selling high.
