Is it worth renewing Premium Bonds periodically

Section62

1spiral said:

Section62 said:

Alexland said:

1spiral said:

Actually I think there is a very good argument for older bonds having a better chance of winning.

The reason being that on rare occasions ineligible bonds have their winnings returned to the prize pot and are redistributed to a number that was in that draw. If you cash in and re-buy, you lose that potential prize option.

That's really interesting but is there evidence that older bonds are more likely to be ineligible than newer ones? For example a quick google search returned a FOS decision where the ineligible ones were actually the newest ones recently purchased because the person opened a second account and in total exceeded their £50k allowance across both accounts. Then there was a big argument about returning the winnings on the newest bonds.

I think 1spiral was making a different argument - that older bonds might be eligible for reallocated prizes, and therefore the older the bond the more draws it had been eligible for in which a belated reallocation may still be due.  In other words, an old bond is eligible for not just the current draw, but might benefit from retrospective wins from historic draws as well.

That was exactly my point but I'm interested by the point you make re it only being £25 that can be won.

What I think you're saying is that in reallocating the prizes, it just shunts everyone below it up by one. So if the ineligible prize was one of the £1m prizes, then one of the 100K prizes would be bumped up to £1m leaving one of the 50K prizes to be bumped up to 100K and so on until at the bottom someone that won nothing would get £25.

^Exactly that

1spiral said:

I have certainly seen posts of people that have received adhoc wins for draws several months/years after the original draw but can't recall if they were always £25.

The additional 'prize' amount will be the difference between what was won, and the prize they were entitled to if the ineligible bond had been weeded out before the prize allocation had been done.  So for example the first person who won a £100 prize would be upgraded to the £500 level and therefore get an additional £400.

These extra amounts aren't additional 'wins' as such they are just adjustments of the value of the prize awarded.  The only ones which might perhaps be regarded as additional 'wins' are those upgraded from £0 to £25.

Alexland

Section62 said:
older bonds might be eligible for reallocated prizes, and therefore the older the bond the more draws it had been eligible for in which a belated reallocation may still be due.  In other words, an old bond is eligible for not just the current draw, but might benefit from retrospective wins from historic draws as well.

Aah I see so an older bond comes with the possibility of historic winnings reallocation so is therefore more attractive. That must mean they keep a ranking of results from each draw to determine the relative position of all non winning bonds or at least some of the highest ranking non winning bonds.

UKX69

jabu94 said:

I've held the maximum amount of Premium Bonds for a number of years. In the last few months, I've noticed what amounts to a considerable reduction in my returns. I was just wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience and if it would improve the results to "refresh" the bonds - that is to cash in and then rebuy a portion of the bonds in order to "update" the bond numbers on a regular basis, to improve returns. Basically, what I am asking is whether there is any advantage to owning newer bonds?

I seem to remember that the Mail on Sunday ran an article on this many years ago. The journalist had noted that a number of readers had written in to say that they had received small wins on newer bonds, so he had decided to run an experiment to see if any new bonds he purchased would follow suit. Can’t remember the outcome. Clearly luck of the draw.