Maybe I shouldn't pay off my loan asap?

Prudent financial advice has always been that you should pay off loans that don't have deductive interest first, which in my case would be my personal loan. Further, you should do this asap to reduce the amount of non-deductible interest you pay.

Right now, I have about $7000 still available from my personal loan. I've come to realise that it's pretty futile to constantly add extra repayments to this from my wage, only to withdraw it again when I inevitably gamble. What I'm thinking of doing is making minimum repayments and trying to pay off the loan with gambling winnings.

Yes. That sounds crazy. And it probably is.

My current mood and line of thinking stems from my gambling session today. Initially I went to try to track the spin of a ball. For the first two spins I noticed the ball fell from the exact same spot, but a different spot on the third spin. I pretty much gave up after that, as the casino environment was very effective in breaking down my new line of focus.

I started gambling with my usual "strategy", but almost exclusively relying on the 1-2 sector. I sat next to an old lady who was speaking Cantonese, and who was playing only sparsely. The dealer was a Chinese lady, a bit chubby and friendly enough. She was nice to spin even when we weren't placing any bets.

There was also an older man standing at the end of the table watching. He had the look of death on him - a long face and really worn out eyes. He chuckled when I lost on a spin, and from that point on I found him to be an annoyance. He never played, instead just stood there watching the whole time.

The Chinese lady eventually left after laughing at the number of reds that came up (about 12 in a row) and then betting (and losing) when the colours started "skipping". But the man was still there. Now, two young American girls had come to the table playing socially. The old man could be heard telling them where to bet and telling them what number would come up next. They were polite to him at first but later ignored him.

I really felt like saying something like "if you knew where the ball would land you'd place a bet". He even commented on my betting, completely using hindsight to support what he was saying. So if I lost, he'd say something about me being wrong, and if I won, he'd tell them what betting strategy he thought I was using. He even made a remark about "not having guts", not sure who that was directed to, but I thought if anyone there didn't have guts then that would be him.

Anyway, I was up $880 at one stage. I actually came because my dad asked for $100 to help repair some paint work on the car, so I told myself I had far exceeded my goal. Yet I continued. The memory of seeing Eric with that Audi Q5 last night kept me going. I needed to be successful.

However, I started losing when a streak of 0-3 sectors appeared. I managed to win some back as that streak didn't last too long, and hung around the $1200 level. Being at the third dealer now, I realised what was happening - the 2.7% house edge was slowly chipping away at my bank roll. Not only that, but the entire environment was chipping away at my concentration and focus. I felt tired, and was more tempted to just throw all my money on the table. It took a lot of self restraint and self control not to do that.

The thought of walking away down $2000 was very much in the back of my mind. I did not want that to happen. Yet I continued playing.

Finally, on one spin I bet on the 1-2 sector. I was at around the $800 mark, so a loss would've effectively killed me. The ball was spinning towards the 0-3 sector when it hit the side of a pocket and ricocheted back towards my section, barely missing the 0-3 sector and landing on 2. Even the dealer said I was lucky.

I was now up $390, and decided that was it for me. Although I would've wanted my $880 back, this was far FAR better than walking out minus $2000. I had the $100 for my car, and whatever else was extra.

And so yes, that is the context to my thinking at the moment. If I end up losing the remainder of the $7000 which I have available, then at least that means I won't gamble anymore. This hinges on the assumption that I won't use my savings to gamble, which I don't think I have ever done as long as I had an outstanding debt (I always used the debt to facilitate the gambling).

If that did occur, I'd still make the minimum payments and save the rest, and I suppose if the savings ever did cross paths with my debt, then I could always just pay it off. But this putting the money into the loan and then withdrawing it again thing has to stop.

So here's to hoping I have the self control to limit myself to gambling about once a week, and to be able to walk away as long as I am up.

On a more philosophical note, I realised that many people like to think they can figure out, or predict, the future - myself included. Sorta. I mean, I know I won't know where the ball will land, but I like to think that I can take an educated guess, mainly being the assumption that it would land in my sector on average 2/3 times.

However, I remember seeing a guy today rubbing his chin, looking at the screen of numbers, probably thinking about what patterns he could discern, if any. Then there was the annoying old man who thought he knew everything.

It just made me think about how we think we can out-smart the system. Not only that, the casino wants us to think we can out-smart the system, so we keep throwing our money away trying, when in reality the system is that they have a 2.7% house advantage by paying 35 to 1 when the odds we're up against is 1 to 37.

Maybe what I've written in this entire post is just another example of someone thinking they can beat the system.