by Brigid Ismail

Created on: March 20, 2009

I have to save my losing lottery tickets for the day I win so that I can deduct what I spent from my winnings. If I hit the Win4 number and get $2,000, I won't pay taxes on it if I can prove I spent more than that on tickets. I hope to win early in the year so that I can have my friends save their losing tickets. If I win big, the more losers I collect the less I pay in taxes. If I hit the Mega, I'm not going to bother with the deductions. What's a few thousand out of several million?

In December, if I haven't won, then I can throw the losers out something I don't always remember to do. Last year, I knew there was a ticket in there somewhere that earned me a free ticket and I forgot to redeem it. To do that, I had to go to the corner store and scan all my tickets. I had to stand there with my folded and crumpled tickets trying to straighten them out so that they can be read by the scanner. Maybe that free ticket is the winning ticket.

The looks I got from customers in and out of the store were not nice but a free ticket is a free ticket. The scanner kept telling me that all I have are losers or it is having a problem reading the bar code. I shouldn't even have brought all my tickets with me because the one that gave me the free ticket was a Take 5 and I also play Numbers and Win4 and regular lottery and the Mega. So I am only scanning Take 5 tickets. Other people wanted to use the scanner so I let them go ahead and I continued when they finished. This was an all-day project.

The man behind the counter got a little annoyed. The store is a little cramped and I took up a lot of room. Every time someone wanted a newspaper I had to make room for the person to get past me as the papers are in the back. I was asked why I am scanning so many tickets and I explained about the free ticket. It could be a winning ticket. I was told that if I bought a ticket it would be the same thing. Whatever ticket is generated could be a winner or a loser and whether it is a free ticket or a ticket that is paid for the next ticket generated by the machine will have the same numbers. I was given a dollar to buy a ticket and asked to throw away those old, crumpled tickets. The ticket didn't win. I am not convinced that if I had gotten my free ticket, it would have the same numbers. The ticket that earned me a free ticket is in the garbage and I didn't get my freebie. It could have been a winner.

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