lottery or premium bonds?

georgy9

hi all,
ive started playing the lottery (just £2 a week). i also have a few premium bonds (literally!). do you think i should quite the lottery and just put the money in bonds because atleast i get my money back. are the odds better at winning on the bonds than the lottery?
thanks

cuffie

You are unlikely to win anything with just a few PB. The more you have, the more chance you have of winning. We have just cashed all of ours in to get our next house and we had a lot - wins weren't that much to be honest. There's always the "chance" though, and if you are dead set on spending £2 a wk on something, then go PB...how lucky have you been on the lottery? If you look at the amount you would "waste" by playing the lottery (£104/yr if no wins), and if you'd put in PB (min £100 bond), at least you get your £100 back in PB!!

Figures as follows - your chances of winning
Lottery -
Jackpot 6 no's - 1 in 14m
5 + bonus - 1 in 2.3 m
5 numbers - 1 in 55,000

PBonds
Each £1 bond is entered (ie have £500 and 500 chances of winning).
There are 2 x £1m prizes, 5 x £100k prizes, 9 x £50k prizes and so on with the smallest win £50. Apparantly any bond has a 1 in 24,000 chance of winning. If you hold £30k of bonds, you are estimate to get 15 prizes/yr. 15 x £50 prizes though is £750 - not a lot on £30k, but of course, you could get a biggie in there!

Good luck! x

Astaroth

has anyone actually known someone win anything more than £50 on premium bonds? My mother and her siblings looked at theirs a few years ago and even though they have a total of £5,000 between them none of them have won a single thing over the last 30 years - also suspiciously the list of winnings on teletext was different for those in the north than those in the south of the country

cuffie

The most I won was £1k for 1 draw but that was years and years ago, but I was holding £20k at the time. It really does matter how many you hold........ £5k between a few people is not a lot to be honest. Have any of them moved? Apparantly there are millions of pounds left unclaimed because of people moving house where they haven't informed them.
If you know the bond number find out here if you've won....
http://www.nsandi.com/products/pb/haveYouWon.jsp
I say all of that and looking at this months, someone is holding £128 worth of bonds and won £25k!!. I've seen the 1m jackpot go to others with less, so its all a game of luck!

Astaroth

I cant see why the number of people sharing the bonds would change the chances of them as a collective winning anything.

The reason they found out they had won nothing in 30 years was by writting to them (this was pre online checking days) and all 3 of them got letters back saying hadnt won anything but by buying more bonds they would increase their chances

pudding06

My husband recently won I think it was £500 and he has only had them for 6 months.

What annoyed me was that he put our money into premium bonds when I am struggling to pay our bills.

Still £500 was nice esp since my mum has never wone anything even though has has them since bf I was born and I'm 47 !!!


pudds

margaretclare

mlmoneysaver wrote:

Maybe the argument can be re-structured; what's the least pointless way of spending (say) £100 per year, premium bonds or lottery?

Premium bonds or lottery? Both are gambling. Premium bonds - advantage might be said to be: you don't lose your original stake, with lottery you do.

I wouldn't touch either of them with the proverbial. Working out the comparative chances of winning with one as against the other is IMHO a complete and utter waste of time and energy.

If you put your £2 a week into a decent savings account, at the end of the year you'll have £102 with interest added. Your £2 into the lottery will just have vanished into thin air. It's a no-brainer.

Margaret

ohmsoft

Based on the odds
cuffie has given above, and my understading of premium bonds. If you held £2000 for a year statistically you should win at least (and most likely to be) £50. Thats and AER of 2.5% marginally beating the inflation target - NS&I review the prize fund to maintain this balance.

In my mind this does allow you to gamble almost without risk - although as pointed out some people are unlucky and won't win for much longer. Somebody has to take the jackpot. I therefore consider PBs a worthwhile investment if held as a small percenage of holdings - in some cases.

Lotto provides a slightly higher chance of winning a large amount as the prize fund is larger - however the odds are stacked against you and can be considered no more than a bit of fun (if you like that sort of thing).

OMS

Norbert_Colon

If you spent £100 a year on lottery tickets you would on average have £50 at the end of the year.

If you put £100 into premium bonds you would on average have £103.50 at the end of the year.

(Strictly speaking 'If you spent £100 a year for a million years on X, on average you'd have Y left at the end of each year')

So you lose less money with premium bonds.

But the lottery is more fun to play, and that might well be worth paying £50 a year for.

georgy9

thanks guys, very informative. i think a little of each for good balance, although maybe a bit more in bonds.
- G

margaretclare

Norbert_Colon wrote:

But the lottery is more fun to play, and that might well be worth paying £50 a year for.

Where's the fun in it? Sad little people scurrying into their local newsagent to scribble on numbers on a piece of paper.

Now a casino, I could quite see that there's fun in that. Or bingo even. But Lotto? Can't see where the fun is.

Margaret