Would I have given the same advice if they were married? No. I would have truly advised marriage and financial counseling. Money breaks up more marriages than anything, and couples that are already not seeing eye to eye and where one has a gambling addiction should being willing to leave or decide that this is something they can live with.

We are all in different places financially, and those places are changing daily. We have not seen economic numbers like these since the days of WWII.

I – and others – make substantial salaries, and are contributed to by spouses with equal contributions. $10 a week on the lottery does not impact our lives, our charitable giving, our children’s education or our ability to put food on the table.

But today, there are so many who are less fortunate than that. Hard working, good souls who simply are caught up in the wave of unfortune circumstances (my kind way of describing the wool we allowed to be pulled over our eyes) this country is experiencing.

If $10 a day, or week, is critical to your family unit, then no, lottery tickets are an extravagance. I can only hope Sharon shares the comments here with her boyfriend, and they hit home. I wouldn’t dare presume to know her situation and advise her to take drastic actions – like leaving him.

Advice and counsel…words and actions we can all live by.
Sharon, best of luck. Consult your family, get sonme solid advice. Reach out. God bless.

Do I gamble? NO. But I see the effects of gambling in my state. Last week I was surprised by a totally unexpected check for $500 as a property tax rebate for old and disabled people in my state. Just imagine how many old and disabled people can be in one state and how many of them got these checks all from the procedes of gambling. We thank you, but I would be just as happy to not see people ruining their’s and the ones they supposedly love by gambling.

Our newspaper the other day had two major articles. One on the horrible unemployment numbers and the other on the record high slots income from the last weekend–we are talking about $50 million!!! I’m having a hard time thinking of how with so many without work and having trouble makings ends meet that people still have money for gambling. It is nuts.

Sharon, I wish you the best and that doesn’t necessarily include your guy. Plenty of guys out there with the common sense to use their money in sensible ways, and even if you can’t find them, much better to be single than deal with a spendaholic the rest of your life because even if you leave them, what you lost financially in the years you were with them will always haunt you.

http://www.mybargainbuddy.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=4

I used to work with a girl that went gambling up to Canada every chance she got. She was always happy to tell us about her comped rooms, blah blah but we never heard anything about the many weekends she went up there and ended in the hole. This same girl had problems with her finances, could never understand how I made ends meet on less money than she made (she also got around $400 month child support but otherwise we made the same incomes) yet she blew money left and right and always had an excuse for why she spent it. Incidently she then went bankrupt and then borrowed her sisters credit card to start doing it all over.

The point being that gamblers always have an excuse for what they are doing. If your wife doesn’t gamble and you do, be sure you are giving her the exact same amount you are throwing away so she can do something fun with it, like save it for a rainy day.