premium bonds.

[gremlin]

I've read too many complaints about online only banks and the hassle of administering them, especially at the end of the term.

For the last few years, the banks with most satisfied customers are the ones without branches:
https://www.which.co.uk/money/banking/b ... VTn0B0PJNC

Just sayin', like...


Oh, and for balance, feck-all wins on on premium bonds for me.

[Bustaspoke]

£75 this month & £100 last month

[Screwdriver]

nada.

[Taipan]

3 wins totalling £175!

[MyLittleStudPony]

£25 [retches uncontrollably].

[Demannu]

£325

Takes us over £2.5k so far this year, which is/will be 10% up on last year and a min 6.5% return on the year.

[Jody]

Nowt again. but with sub £10K in there, I shouldn't expect to win often !!

[Scotsrich]

£100

[KungFooBob]

Even more chances to win!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66438764

[Mr. Dazzle]

"The chances of winning some of the biggest Premium Bonds prizes have increased to their highest level for more than 15 years."

I'm sure I heard on the news that some other metric of financial and savings performance is at a 15 year high

[Phoenix]

Thought I’d share this with you from Paul Lewis on Premium Bonds in The i. on line newspaper.

If you get one of those annoying pop up to subscribe just hit “Reader View” Gets rid of them without losing content or graphics.

All the facts and figures.

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/mon ... nt-2572862

[Screwdriver]

Locked behind a paywall.

[Wscad]

Now and then, when I read some of these posts, I think, why aren’t these people who post random pie in the sky horse shit in charge of the Bank of England ? Or the IMF?

[Phoenix]

Locked behind a paywall.

Brave browser reader mode overcomes this problem on The i

[Mr. Dazzle]

Locked behind a paywall.

It's a fairly obvious piece saying what I've been saying throughout this thread.

Basically if you don't put much money in, then you shouldn't expect much out and the likelihood of you winning very big isn't high even if you put the maximum in. He says something like even if you put the maximum in then you'd potentially win the million quid only once in 1,000yrs.

His headline is a bit misleading though...

It's true that most people won't win a thing, but I was surprised by how little most people have in there! That's not laughing at how poor the poor people are surprise, it's surprise that the majority of people only have a fiver or so in there. On the other hand, I bet loads of it is just 'cause people withdrew their 10k not realising they had £10,005 in there.

He says you've got a 1:22,000 chance of winning something, so if you've got 50k in there you're basically guaranteed to win something every month ('cause each quid gets you one entry). Statistics being what they are though, that's not true It's like the whole "1 2 3 4 5 6 is just as likely to win the lottery" thing.

If you've got 50k in there you're very very likely to win something every month.

[Wscad]

Smell what you are shovelling potter . You used to post some very sensible contributions to this forum. Not anymore.

[Screwdriver]

Smell what you are shovelling potter . You used to post some very sensible contributions to this forum. Not anymore.

Makes perfect sense to me...

If you have £1 in there and there's a 1:22000 chance of winning AND the lowest prize is £25 (I think) then it's going to take some time before you get your average 4% return.

If you have £22k in there then you should expect a statistical analysis of your winnings to follow a much smoother path over the short term.

A lucky few will occasionally see a massive spike in their return and therefore a much larger number of us will suffer for it. The only consolation being that statistically, it all averages out between all the players to the prevailing rate of return i.e. circa 4%.

It's not a huge money maker but it's not much worse than locking it away in a long term investment with the added bonus that once a month you might just hit a big one. What @Potter is suggesting is that with such a relatively small investment (no more than £50k) the low interest rate on savings makes struggling to find the odd couple of percent better return a waste of time.

[Felix]

Locked behind a paywall.

Brave browser reader mode overcomes this problem on The i

I was just refreshing the page and reading some more till the popup appears then repeat

[Pirahna]

Wifey and I had £50k each in Premium Bonds that we moved elsewhere earlier this year, the money was under performing. I was getting fed up with zero prize months, £50 the next month, £25 the month after. Even if you only open a Chase account you'll get 4.1% a month, every month and can access the money instantly. If you don't need access to the money for 12 months then there are accounts giving 6%.

[Count Steer]

OTOH I've got £5k in which has made about 4%pa for the last 2 years. If I was getting 6% that'd be, say £100 more, so I'm basically gambling £100pa. (If they made £0 the difference would be £300 obvs). So there's probably a case to be made for sticking a few £k in but it's harder to make for £50k (or £100k).

Quite happy to have that amount in play for the fun of hoping for £100k.