I agree with you. Don't risk the roof over your head.
I only own one property but have a friend who has something like half a dozen investment properties and a couple of others she owns outright.
She never risks their home. When she is going for another loan, it is one of the other properties that is on the line.
Personally, if i were you, I would never borrow against your home for money. Buy only what you can afford in cash. That's pretty well how I live, anyway. I don't have the latest in cars or furniture or anything but what i have is mine and I can sleep easier knowing we have no debts of any kind. It frees up money too when there is no mortgage.
Now re lotto. I consider myself a bit of an expert there.
I ran the Tattslotto syndicate at work for 20 years.
There were about 35-42 people in it each year and we all put in $1 a week.
I bought tickets that were approximately to that value, just slightly under actually. It is hard to do it exactly to the cent as prices on tickets are odd amounts etc
But anyway, we had a little win about every 4-5 weeks. Div 4 or 5. So maybe $12-$30 back for every $140-$180 spent? Something like that.
Tattslotto is like poker machines. They are tweaked to give a certain percentage back in prizes, it is a mathematical principle. So even if you put in $1 and get 80c back, you might feel good but actually you've lost 20c. Then if you continue gambling, inevitably, you will end up losing it all. Unless you are one of the statistically very rare species that wins a first div. That's what everyone hangs out for though, isn't it!
In all my 20 years of spending $35-$40 a week, we only ever had one bigger prize, a div 3. That was about $1500, from memory and we got it twice (system ticket I think).
Tattslotto is fine for a little flutter with friends, as long as you know it's a mug's game & you're probably giving away your money. A superannuation savings plan it is not.
Yes, you're $11k in front. If you had $50 a week to spare and religiously saved it in a special account, you'd be much better off.
By way of a PS about Lotto.
Because the work tickets came to slightly under what I was being paid, plus we had some winnings through the year, in Dec I would add it all up (deducting the cost to pay for tickets over the Xmas holidays) and then divide it between syndicate members.
Usually it came to about $20-$30 per person.
Staff were absolutely rapt with that, coming as it did just before Christmas. But of course, they had spent $52 a year to get that.
But, I had a lot of very happy people on my hands at the end of the year.
