Lottery is a fixture in American culture. People spend upward of $100 billion on tickets each year, rendering it the most popular form of gambling in the country. And it is supposed to be a good thing, raising money for state programs that save kids and other worthy causes. But just how significant that revenue really is in broader state budgets and whether it’s worth the trade-off of a lot of people losing their hard-earned money is debatable.

Lotteries are often run as pseudo-private enterprises, with a private operator collecting the winnings and distributing them to players. But they’re also a public enterprise, and they’re a major source of state revenue. So how do we know what we’re paying for when it comes to these games?

One way is to look at the data, and lotteries actually make a fair amount of this available. In the United States, lotteries are required to provide public reports on their financial results, which you can find here.

Another way is to talk to winners. And when you do that, you get a very different picture of the lottery. These are people who have spent years playing and have a lot of wins. They have a strategy that they follow. They have a team of helpers who manage their finances, they set up education savings for their kids, and they diversify their investments.

And they have a lot of fun, too. But it’s not for everyone, and they do have to be aware that their wealth is a finite resource. They may have to start donating to charity more than they did before, and they may even have to sell some of their cars.