Premium Bonds Article Discussion Area

sdooley

Oh and if nan is going into a care home and has to sell her investments to pay the fees, maybe sell the premium bonds last. You are normally allowed to keep the last £16,000 of your capital and not pay further fees out of capital - though your income from pension etc will continue to be counted as a resource for meeting fees.

Any prizes she can keep for treats and hairdressing etc in comparison to interest on a bank account which would be taken into account together with other income such as pension - i.e. all over £10 weekly disregard would go to pay care fees.

SussexResearcher

sdooley wrote: »

Premium Bonds ... are an investment as well as a gamble as, at least with larger investments, the return can be predicted with reasonable probability.

b. The higher rate taxpayer who wants a range of uncorrelated investments.

Your posting is eminently effective in explaining the rationale behind Premium Bond holding.

For someone with a total wealth portfolio of £30000 - all in PBs is a bad idea.

For another with a portfolio of £600000 - £30000 in PBs (5% of the portfolio) is a perfectly sensible idea, in my view.

multimillionaire

Should anyone want the September winners list downloaded in all its glory!

http://www.nsandi.com/products/pdf_lgs/pb_bondlist_09_07.pdf

Good luck for Oct!

MM

rory41444

But has anyone ever actually met anyone who has won the million pound prize?

Surely there must be someone out there who knows of someone who has won it. And why always the secrecy - I've never heard of or seen a press report of anyone who has won the big prize.

All very suspicious to me.

M3_Sussex

rory41444 wrote: »

..........I've never heard of or seen a press report of anyone who has won the big prize.

All very suspicious to me.

There was a woman who had won a million on PBs live on the Jeremy Vine show (radio 2) about three weeks ago. She sounded real enough!

isofa

rory41444 wrote: »

But has anyone ever actually met anyone who has won the million pound prize? Surely there must be someone out there who knows of someone who has won it. And why always the secrecy - I've never heard of or seen a press report of anyone who has won the big prize. All very suspicious to me.

There are, and quite a few documented cases, but also I'd guess the majority of high-rolling winners sensibly remain anonymous, and I can't blame them, not sure I'd shout it on here or in the press if I won 1 million, would you?

Because you personally haven't met a jackpot / big prize winner, that makes PBs suspicious?! Fantastic reasoning :rolleyes: Have you personally met any lottery winners, or winners of other large sums of money?

I researched this a bit earlier in this thread, finding plenty of stories, have a look at page 3

:beer:

Jonbvn

SussexResearcher wrote: »

What I said:
Of course, you may know someone whose PB holdings have returned more than 4%. However, such anecdotal evidence should never be the basis for making rational decisions about investments and savings.

What you said:
Your comment seems to suggest that there is only one rational decision to be made on a single issue. In fact, it depends on a person's conditions and outlook. This is why different individuals take different decisions.

Sorry, but my post never suggested that there was only one rational decision for any single issue, as highlighted.

hetroperplexual

tightwadman wrote: »

A year back I had the full £30,000 investment in premium bonds and with that amount I should have been winning at least one prize every month. It didnt happen. Four months produced no prize at all. One month produced three wins - two £50 and one £100 and all the rest were just £50.

Frankly I lost money as I would have received over £1000 more than my winnings had I left the money in a high interest account I had. Dont even think about Premium Bonds as an investment and frankly if you cannot win with £30,000 worth what do you think your chances are with the odd bond or two or even a thousand? Only the stinking rich should think about putting money into bonds.

Frankly the experience has made me hugely cynical and I dont believe there are in fact any winners of the big prizes. I have seen no evidence and the winner is always anonymous. Surely by now someone would have come forward to explain what they did with their mill ?

Steer well clear of premium bonds!

I put 30k in one year ago, my first year winnings were £1650= 5.5% tax free

I am a Statistician, but I've no qualifications in Cosmology!:rotfl:

barnishroader

I was considering investing £3000 into a mini cash isa but have also noticed on their site premium bonds.

Not having a clue what premium bonds are or do can anyone advise me?

Aegis

Premium bonds generate a net sum of interest at 4% per annum, then distribute it like a lottery. Generally speaking, the consensus on these boards seems to be that they're ok for a bit of fun or for higher rate taxpayers, but for most people ISAs, savings accounts, regular savers, etc are a better vehicle for guaranteed capital products.