Premium bonds - any point investing under £1000's

PixelPound

So the magic number is £15,249
This or higher and you are more likely to win something than nothing most months.

£1000 and you'll likely win a prize every 2 years
£222 and you'll likely win a prize every 8 years

Found a nice site that gives a good visual representation  https://www.premiumbondsprizes.com/#1000

borderline

But isn't the PB like the lottery ? the more tickets you have the more chances you have, and the more PB you have the more chances you have.. but on the other hand you could only have one lottery ticket and still win the jackpot , and if you only have one PB is still in the draw .You just need luck.
I've played the lottery since it started, only one ticket per draw, the most I've won was once £90 and another time £100. August will be my first time with PB but I only have £5000, I don't expect to win anything. A friend of mine has 50k and he is always wining something.. but he is always lucky with money unlike me

Albermarle

MX5huggy said:

JohnSwift10 said:

I've had one premium bond since the 1960's never won a single prize 

I was once in a lottery syndicate where when we had won £100 total in prizes we bought £100 of scratch cards.

There were 20 of us so 20 lines every week.

Out of that £100 of scratch cards we won a total of £10.00

We never won enough to buy another £100 of scratch cards in the time I remained in the syndicate. I left because I was made redundant, you had to work in the factory to be in the syndicate.

I have never bought a scratch card since. That was in 1990.

It wasn’t 1990, the National Lottery didn’t start till 1994 and scratch cards in 1995. 

Although I think various scratchcards were around before the National Lottery ones appeared.

Albermarle

borderline said:

But isn't the PB like the lottery ? the more tickets you have the more chances you have, and the more PB you have the more chances you have.. but on the other hand you could only have one lottery ticket and still win the jackpot , and if you only have one PB is still in the draw .You just need luck.
I've played the lottery since it started, only one ticket per draw, the most I've won was once £90 and another time £100. August will be my first time with PB but I only have £5000, I don't expect to win anything. A friend of mine has 50k and he is always wining something.. but he is always lucky with money unlike me

If you have the full £50K, you will win something nearly every month. Some months you will win a few prizes.
However the point is that when you add up all the prizes for a year and divide by £50K, is that % higher or lower than you would have got in one of the better paying easy access savings accounts.
Does your friend do this, or like many people do they just think they are lucky but never actually work out the calculation ( like my OH !) 

PixelPound

borderline said:

But isn't the PB like the lottery ? the more tickets you have the more chances you have, and the more PB you have the more chances you have.. but on the other hand you could only have one lottery ticket and still win the jackpot , and if you only have one PB is still in the draw .You just need luck.
I've played the lottery since it started, only one ticket per draw, the most I've won was once £90 and another time £100. August will be my first time with PB but I only have £5000, I don't expect to win anything. A friend of mine has 50k and he is always wining something.. but he is always lucky with money unlike me

Though @Albermarle has answered, the odds calculator above gives it in numbers. 79.67% you win nothing in a month, and expect to win nothing 10 times a year. So you could win twice in a year (average is 2.7), only a 6.5% you win nothing over the year. If you are in the unluckiest 25%, expect £75 (1.50%) or less, with the mean (luckiest 50%) getting £150 (3.00%) or more.

Your friend will win nothing (on average) once every 10 draws, and would win an average of 27.3 prizes (31% of these being £25, same percentage for your 2.7). Virtually certainty he will win during the year, but if he was in the unluckiest 25% he'd expect £1,450 (2.90%), with the mean getting £1,725 (3.45%) or more.

So really it's very little to do with your friend being lucky and more to the fact he has £50K invested. Ask him how much he's won over the year, £2100+ means luckiest 25% (though that's based on the July 2023 odds). On average he should win £125 a month, so ask him how lucky he was in July.

sheilavw

me and my siblings each have a £2 premium bond purchased by our Grandparents in the 1960s, none of us has won. My Sister purchased £500 pounds worth approx 20 years ago and has never won. My Brother bought about 7k worth a couple of years ago and wins £25 or £50 several times a year, and £100 one month