Premium Bonds introduce 2nd £1m Prize!

soolin

My family have quite a few bonds dating right back to 1960. My husband is the luckiest though, his £3k of bonds win about £150-£250 per year, one month last year he actually got 2 £50 prizes in the same month. I've got about £1500 and have only won three times (£50 x 3) in the last three years.

As for older ones not winning, according to the powers that be there are relatively few 'old' bonds anymore as they were never bought in vast quantities anyway and many have already been cashed in. Also, like someone has already sai the vast majority of bonds were bought in the past few years so statistically th enewer ones should show up in the winning lists far more often than the rarer older ones.

Soo

nrsql

Interest rate is 3.25% - but that includes the large prizes which you are very unlikely to win.
The small prizes constitute 89% of the fund so you would expect a return of 89% of 3.25% - around 2.9%. Any bigger prizes just count yourself lucky.
Maybe 1 x £50 per year per £2000?

Comparable to savings accounts for higher rate taxpayers - still a bit low though.

gameboy_2

I have had the old maximum of £20k and now re-invested the winnings (winning go into the next draw) if you buy it takes a month. :T

Unlike the other holders here, I have won often (mainly £50) and I love them. Roll on the second million.... :T

I have advised both my parents and other friends to buy them and ALL have won money almost every month - honest. :T

Your stake money is safe and you now have double the chance of winning a million - try that on the lotto! :T

If you pay tax at the high rate consider them - I for one love them. Getting that prize through the door - you can't beat it! :T

jo--king_3

myself and hubby put 20k in bonds in january , i have had five wins only 50 pounds each, hubby has had three wins of 50 pounds, i love checking our numbers online, be interesting to see if our wins slow down soon

trademark

yes jo .... keep us informed ....... as i said in my experience the newer bonds win , as have friends and family .

there is actually a facility to encash the bonds and immediatly buy new ones again , ive confirmed this over the phone , so its not just myself and a few others that have this belief .

you are still out of the next draw though so effectively you could be costing yourself a cool 1m for the sake of a few more £50's

by the way has anyone ever known a 1m winner , through friends family the media etc
i havnt , it seems strange that you often see lottery winners on tv happily sharing the knowledge of their win but never a premium bond winner

hope we are not being fleeced.

lipidicman

gameboy wrote:

Your stake money is safe and you now have double the chance of winning a million - try that on the lotto! :T

The odds of winning a million are lower than the lottery aren't they? and you can win a lot more than a million on the lottery

How about this - put the money in a high interest account (eg ISA/no-tax-paying-spouse, whatever) and use the interest to buy a lottery ticket (£52 for the year). Somebody needs to do some calculations and probability analysis, but this could be better?

Paul_Herring

gameboy wrote:

Your stake money is safe and you now have double the chance of winning a million - try that on the lotto!

Your stake money isn't safe. It is eroded by inflation. This missing interest is your 'fee' for the PB lottery.

You could achieve a similar "safe stake" with the lottery; stick £30,000 into (e.g.) ING, and with the monthly interest, buy lottery Tickets. With the chance of sharing a multi million prize.

The two systems are fundimentally the same. Stake money is "safe" so this cannot be used as a differentiating factor between Lotto and PB.

Paul_Herring

Oh dear - just found a loophole in the PB T&C's

7. Higher value band - Up to and including 31 July 2005, the share allocated to this band is used to fund one £1,000,000 prize, and the balance is divided amongst the remaining prize values in equal shares. From 1 August 2005, the share allocated to this band is used to fund at least one £1,000,000 prize, and the balance is divided amongst the remaining prize values in equal shares. The number of £1,000,000 prizes is set out in our Interest Rates leaflet available at post offices and from NS&I, and on our website at www.nsandi.com.

Anyone think they'll backtrack on this anytime soon (or perhaps less likely have three or four)

Moorepart

Something is definitely wrong with ERNIE only they wont admit it

Gonna call it Eric, I had a visit from a dear friend yesterday from USA who is a sesco enginneer,what he said was,It uses a specialised chipset developed by Intel to generate random number. Coming up with genuinely random numbers using a computer is deceptively hard because software can only mimic true unpredictability – so eventually patterns can emerge. Software systems are therefore commonly known as "pseudo random number generators". Intel's random number generating chip uses thermal noise – changes in the voltage and heat energy given off - from transistors as its source of randomness.

The thermal noise measured is a result of random electron and material behaviour in the transistors. The noise is used to control the speed of an oscillator in order to churn out binary numbers.

It's matter of luck

PS: I wrote down what he said

Paul_Herring

Moorepart wrote:

Intel's random number generating chip uses thermal noise – changes in the voltage and heat energy given off - from transistors as its source of randomness.

The thermal noise measured is a result of random electron and material behaviour in the transistors. The noise is used to control the speed of an oscillator in order to churn out binary numbers.

It's matter of luck

http://lightstraw.co.uk/gpo/posb/ernie4.html