How do I calculate...

CGG_3

...today's value of £14,500 simply put and left in a  bank account since 2004, please.
Is there an online calculator that would work out the interest that this would have accrued over the years?
Thanks in advance.

bowlhead99

No there isn't a calculator for the return on money in 'a' bank account because the calculator wouldn't know which particular bank account you would have used.

For example some accounts pay less than the Bank of England base rate (e.g. only 0.01% while the bank base rate is 0.1%) and some pay a lot more (e.g. 0.5% or 1% while the bank base rate is only 0.1%).  If you 'simply put and left it in a bank account' and didn't shop around for the best rates, you would expect to get a lot less than the highest amount possible that more active savers would get when they kept moving their balances to a 'best buy' account. 

You can see a compound interest calculator at https://monevator.com/compound-interest-calculator/ but would have to decide what interest rate you want to assume you would have got. For example if you assumed the interest would average out to 2% a year (higher than that in 2004 but lower than that now), then after 16 years your £14500 would have turned into £19,900.

You could prove the number by doing  14500 x 1.02 x 1.02 x 1.02 x 1.02 and so on for 16 lots of multiplying by 1.02, with a calculator.

But you might assume you would get a much worse rate than the average if it's just sitting dormant in an account which would very quickly lose any 'promotional' bonus rates of interest if you weren't a new customer.  If you only averaged 1% or 0.5% instead of 2%, you would have £17000 or 15700 respectively.

Of course, £15700 or £17000 or £19900 do not really have as much spending power today of £14500 in 2004, depending what sort of things you like to buy.

Some people publish example interest rate history tables to give you an idea of what was on offer at different points in the past, but there's no guarantee you would have used the particular accounts they use in their average rates for each year. 

Example http://www.swanlowpark.co.uk/savings-interest-data

DiggerUK

You ask an improbable question, to make it a valid enquiry more details are needed.
You could calculate that £9250 in 2004 would need to be worth £14500 today to have matched inflation along the way, but not answer your question.

This BOE Calculator is my favoured tool. As it only ever goes to previous year you need to add on the last twelve months inflation rate..._

AnotherJoe

CGG_3 said:

...today's value of £14,500 simply put and left in a  bank account since 2004, please.
Is there an online calculator that would work out the interest that this would have accrued over the years?
Thanks in advance.

No there isn't Because it's not a reasonable Question . 

What's the underlying reason for Your question. 

CGG_3

In a nutshell, £14,500 of Premium Bonds were bought in 2004.  We'll be able to work out from adding the wins, here and there, over these years what they're now worth. 
I've seen the online calculator that gives todays value for £14,500 in 2004, but wondered what it may have been worth had it just been left in a basic bank account over the same time.

Reg_Smeeton

CGG_3 said:

I've seen the online calculator that gives todays value for £14,500 in 2004, but wondered what it may have been worth had it just been left in a basic bank account over the same time.

Surely the answer to your question is it is still worth £14,500...

With the caveat that your £14,500 will buy less than it did when you deposited it in 2004 due to the effects of inflation?

dunroving

If it's just a hypothetical question for a light-hearted purpose, keep it simple - just use an inflation calculator, and/or a BOE interest calculator.

DiggerUK

CGG_3 said:

In a nutshell, £14,500 of Premium Bonds were bought in 2004.........

To make sure you kept the value out of inflations way you need to have turned that in to  £22760  as of today..._

CGG_3

Thanks for the replies.
DiggerUK, thanks for doing the sums for me.  Much appreciated.

EthicsGradient

If you want something closer to what you could have got in a savings account (their sources indicate these were instant access accounts from major providers), you can use the figures here: http://www.swanlowpark.co.uk/savings-interest-annual
Multiply the rates for each year together, so that "2019: 1.39%; 2018: 1.18%" means that £100 at the start of 2018 would be 100*1.0118 at the start of 2019, and 100*1.0118*1.0139 at the start of 2020. Plugging those figures into this formula in a spreadsheet says £14,500 in 2014 would be £22516 now. So very close to inflation.

Sea_Shell

So, how much have they won over the years?