Scratchcard Instalments
Scratchcard fans might have noticed that there seems to be a growing trend in favour of dividing top scratchcard prizes into a series of smaller weekly, monthly or annual instalments.
For example, the recently relaunched Weekly Grand scratchcard here in the UK offers ten top prizes of £1,000 per week for a year, and an earlier Birthday Bonus game offered a top prize of £10,000 per year for ten years. The same thing is happening in other countries too. There is a Win For Life game in Virginia that pays the top prize winner $1,000 a week for life. It seems that no matter where you look, paying top prizes in instalments is becoming increasingly popular.
Some people will say that this is a good thing, because installments make it impossible for the winner to blow their fortune all at once. After all, you can’t spend £100,000 if you only have £10,000 of it in the bank. But I think that instalments restrict the winner from enjoying the maximum potential benefits of their success, for two main reasons:
Instalments Restrict The Winner
Receiving a percentage of a win doesn’t allow the winner to improve his or her life in the same way that receiving all of that win would. A winner who receives a cheque for £100,000 might be able to pay off his entire mortgage, or at least a big chunk of it. Or they could buy the car of their dreams, take a trip of a lifetime or start their own business. Doing any of that with a tenth of fiftieth of the total prize sum just wouldn’t be possible, and the chances are that – having less of their win on hand – they would have to be content to doing what they could with a much lesser sum.
Instalments Lack Interest
A winner who receives £100,000 in one payment could put the whole amount in a regular savings account and start earning 5% interest (probably more, but let’s keep this simple), which would be worth £5,000 per year. Giving the winner a tenth of that sum for ten years means he can only make £500 interest in the first year, £1,000 in the second, and so on. This means he would be missing out on £4,500 in the first year, £4,000 in the second year, etc. Actually, he’d miss out on more, because these figures don’t take into account the interest that could be earned on previous interest payments, but you get the idea.
So who benefits from scratchcard instalments? The lottery companies themselves. They get to keep all of the interest earned on cash that they haven’t yet paid to the winner, and they also ensure that the winner still feels a need to chase a big “life-changing” win even though they have really already achieved it!
Okay, rant over, but I think my points are valid. That’s why I only ever play lottery scratchcard games that will pay me the entirety of my win should I ever get so lucky. Virtually all online instant win games pay massive sums in one hit, so why can’t all lottery scratchcards?
Article Last Updated: 08/07/2008 12:21:56
