A pair of California men who’ve been friends since they were in high school have spent many years pooling their money to buy lottery tickets when jackpots reach a certain threshold. Now that’s paying off for Robert Dong and Michael Brisbin, who finally got lucky and hit it big.
The lifelong friends recently won $1.5-million on a Quick Pick Mega Millions. It was far from the $314-million jackpot up for grabs that night, but it’s still an impressive haul. The two will split the prize and they say winning the money is a relief.
"It's just one more unbelievable experience we will talk about when we're 90 years old," Brisbin says.
They didn't say how much they spent weekly, but for fun I figured they bought 5 tickets to both the Tuesday and Friday drawings at $2 per ticket every week for 40 years. That's a little over $1000 per year so their 40 grand investment has landed them 1.5 million!
Michael says "even if we never won it was a great investment because it forced Robert and I to speak twice a week which has been priceless".
Photo courtesy California Lottery