Buy food, or buy lottery tickets?

The other night I ran out to the corner store to buy a jar of salsa so we could make tacos.

The store has two lines, one for lottery tickets, and one for everything else: cigarettes, magazines, soda, food, candy. Granted, it's just a corner store, but it does have quite a lot of simple grocery items.

I was in there for a while, because I had the baby on my hip and he was making friends with everyone in the store.

The entire time I was in there, there were maybe 1-2 people at any time in the line to buy food, and 8-10 people in line for lottery tickets. It was about 5:30, and people looked like they were on their way home from work.

"People!" I wanted to shout. "What are you doing?"

Seeing the two lines, with people pouring in the door and heading straight for the lotto line, was a striking visual reminder of how little financial education many folks have. And many of my neighbors are living on small pensions or social security. I sure hope they're not in there every day, plunking down money on lottery tickets.

On the other hand, maybe the joke's on me. Maybe they know the little corner store doesn't have good value for food items, and they do all their shopping at the bigger stores with better sales, etc.

Full disclosure: I participate in a $1/week office lottery pool.