Are Premium Bonds a scam?

collingwood21

I was given £100 in Premium Bonds when I was a baby, and after 25 years of being invested in the scheme, I won...nothing. So I cashed them in. I guess I don't have the "average luck" required, then.

stevetodd

bjorn_again wrote: »

How do we know they are transparent? How can we check that we are not being fed bull.?

I'm not sure, personally I would take it on trust, but if you suspect that they are cheating on the rate, simply don't buy them. I won't buy any because they only pay out the net equivelant of 5.67% as the prize fund (ie 3.4%/.6 as they are tax free) and there are much better rates out there. That rate of course is much worse for a basic rate tax payer

RayWolfe

DX-SFX wrote: »

I blame the "X Files" for the all the dumb conspiracy theorists.

No. I blame the terminally stupid.
We get more like America every day.

Primrose

They're not a scam as, unlike the National Lottery or other forms of gambling, you can always get your money back, even though you lose a proportion of it from inflation. But I have a fair holding of them and although I reguarly win £50 prizes, I'm sure they would be better off invested in a savings account, especially now more people are buying them after the banking scares.

M3_Sussex

I won £10,000 in June 2007. It's already documented in another post re PBs so I won't repeat it all here.

rtbcomp

I also heard that PSBs were used to pay spies, but that was from a bloke who thought MI5 was bugging his telephone - he could hear them drinking tea in the background :rotfl:

In fact you're gambling the interest with PSBs, not the capital as with the Lottery.

You still lose out on inflation though, but that's true for most savings, index linked ones seem a bit rare at the moment, after all, it wouldn't be cricket if the people who actually worked hard to earn the money in the first place got a better return on it than those who sit on their bums pushing it from one pile to another.

I've got £1900 in PSBs and they're showing a return of 2% at the moment. I'm saving up for something specific and PSBs give bit of interest in what drops through the letter box at the beginning of the month!

atush

I have 500 worth (100 for each of the 5 in the family). We have won 150 in around 5 years. 1 prize of 100 the month afterwe bought them, and 2x25 this year.

They aren't a scam. And money for spies comes out of other budgets. You really think a toilet costs 50K or a hammer 1K? ;-)

pqrdef

atush wrote: »

I have 500 worth (100 for each of the 5 in the family). We have won 150 in around 5 years. 1 prize of 100 the month afterwe bought them, and 2x25 this year.

At the current level of prize funding, just the 2x25 would be over the odds. But of course things were different 5 years ago, when Bank Rate was 4.5%. Much more money in the prize fund then.

atush

We just hold as a little bit of fun. I would never hold PBs as a major investment. Might open an acct at Halifax though ;-)

torbrex

this is a 3 years old thread !!!!!!, are newbies fitted with blinkers so that they cant see the date of the thread they are dragging up?