Premium Bonds Article Discussion Area

denis3

hi
it seems that most people agree that if you have several batches of premium bonds then it may be worthwhile cashing them in and buying 1 batch eg £5000. This seems to prove 'luckier'?
I have built up £1,200 by paying the £50 monthly direct debit (to no avail). is it worth cashing in my £50 bonds and buying a £1200 bond or does this just prove more beneficial if you have bonds values of £5000+??

any advise is welcome!

freddykrueger

In theory surely it should not make a slight bit of difference as to whether your bonds are in £20 denominations or £5000 denominations? It might just come down to "luck"!

Paul_Herring

denis3 wrote: »

hi
it seems that most people agree that if you have several batches of premium bonds then it may be worthwhile cashing them in and buying 1 batch eg £5000. This seems to prove 'luckier'?

Only to the superstitious.

You're actually reducing your odds because you're taking the bonds out of 1-2 monthly draws. Where your numbers might have come up otherwise.

Whether the bonds are in a block or spread out makes no (mathematical) difference to the odds.

I have built up £1,200 by paying the £50 monthly direct debit (to no avail). is it worth cashing in my £50 bonds and buying a £1200 bond or does this just prove more beneficial if you have bonds values of £5000+??

any advise is welcome!

Any advice I'd offer, beyond not bothering, would be off-topic here I'm afraid

(But would involve asking what percentage is that £1200 of your total savings, and what percentage of debt (not including mortgage and CC's paid off in full every month)) But that would be off-topic as I said so I won't

RajJohal

Hi

I know it makes no sense or difference to odds but i built up my premium bonds holding relatively slowly to the 30k figure.

Then i withdrew and reinvested so i have 30,000 consecutive numbers, so far i think its been ok I`ve won £600 in last 6 *dec returned £250 draws June was the first month i did not win a thing...

I`ll stick with it for now..

jamesd

RajJohal, if there was a difference, the random number equipment would be severely broken, would fail the checks on its randomness, and they would have to stop running the draws until it was fixed.

If it makes you happier, that's sufficient reason for doing it, even though it makes no difference long term.

webwiz

jamesd wrote: »

RajJohal, if there was a difference, the random number equipment would be severely broken, would fail the checks on its randomness, and they would have to stop running the draws until it was fixed.

Actually this is not correct. Ernie is subject to the checks you mention and we can be fairly sure that the numbers it produces are random (or random enough). But you must understand that Ernie does NOT produce winning bond numbers. It does not know any bond numbers. What happens is that Ernie produces a list of random numbers which may or may not be current bond numbers. These are then compared on an ordinary computer to the list of current bonds - remember that bonds are constantly being bought and sold. This comparison job is just the sort of computing that no other government department seems capable of doing so I would not be so quick to assume that all is well. If there was a bug in the system that meant that some bond numbers were missed when being compared to Ernie's output it is very unlikely that anyone would be able to tell. The volumes of data are huge. The only way to check this would be for NSI to publish the numbers that Ernie chose so that the millions of bondholders could check their own numbers. However NSI have so far declined to publish these numbers, instead issuing only the bond numbers after the comparison run.

webwiz

There is a funny thing about Premium Bonds. NSI maintain a list of so called "unclaimed" prizes. But prizes do not need to be claimed so there cannot be such a thing as an unclaimed prize. There are 3 ways in which a prize might not be received. First the prize might be returned to NSI as undeliverable. These certainly form part, possibly all, of the unclaimed list. Secondly the prize might get lost in the post. NSI would not know this had happened but after a long period of time when the warrant had not been cashed they might assume it. If so how long a time? Does the warrant expire after a certain period? The third way is if the prize was intercepted by someone and put into their bank instead of the rightful owner's. NSI would never know that this had happened unless the bond owner knew he had won and complained. I suspect that only a minority of bond holders check the winning numbers list.

This is more than a theoretical possibility. Some time ago I was going through the rubbish bins at a block of flats where I lived looking for something else and found two prizes that were on their way to landfill.

born_free_3

Technically premium bonds are not paying interest and your money is safe (not gambling like the lottery), which makes it ideal for muslims that are unwilling to accept interest from banks. That is one of the reasons that I stuck all my cash in here. I won in the first month but nothing in the second month. Happy to take all other freebies as long as not interest. If anyone else has any smart ideas like premium bonds I would happily invest my money in that.

Aegis

born_free wrote: »

Technically premium bonds are not paying interest and your money is safe (not gambling like the lottery), which makes it ideal for muslims that are unwilling to accept interest from banks. That is one of the reasons that I stuck all my cash in here. I won in the first month but nothing in the second month. Happy to take all other freebies as long as not interest. If anyone else has any smart ideas like premium bonds I would happily invest my money in that.

Isn't the fact that it's gambling going to make it non-compliant with Shariah principles?

dkmax_2

webwiz wrote: »

Actually this is not correct. Ernie is subject to the checks you mention and we can be fairly sure that the numbers it produces are random. But you must understand that Ernie does NOT produce winning bond numbers. It does not know any bond numbers. What happens is that Ernie produces a list of random numbers which may or may not be current bond numbers. These are then compared on an ordinary computer to the list of current bonds - remember that bonds are constantly being bought and sold. This comparison job is just the sort of computing that no other government department seems capable of doing so I would not be so quick to assume that all is well.

Precisely. I am glad that there are people out there that appreciate this. For many years National Savings made claims that implied that there was no chance of error - numbers could not be 'left out' - when patently there was. Such a problem happened in 1999 in fact;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/your_money/432748.stm