How to structure Premium Bonds between lucky husband and not so lucky wife?

StingyMinky

My husband and I both have premium bonds - he seems to win every month while I win every month or two (yes, it's extremely annoying!). We were thinking of cashing my bonds in (around £10k) and putting them into his account, but can't seem to work out if that's going to increase or decrease our odds. Anything with a mathematical or statistical calculation makes me run away - please can anyone advise? Thank you.

Section62

StingyMinky said:

My husband and I both have premium bonds - he seems to win every month while I win every month or two (yes, it's extremely annoying!). We were thinking of cashing my bonds in (around £10k) and putting them into his account, but can't seem to work out if that's going to increase or decrease our odds. Anything with a mathematical or statistical calculation makes me run away - please can anyone advise? Thank you.

It will make absolutely no difference to your winnings, except missing out on one month while the newly purchased bonds are ineligible.

Albermarle

It will make zero difference as the process of allocating prizes is totally random. The only way to increase your chances of winning is to have more bonds.

If you both have the same number of bonds, then over a long period any 'luck' will even out .

Ayr_Rage

There is nothing you can do to improve your chances of a win when holding the same value of bonds no matter who holds them.

If you sell and reinvest you will miss at least one draw further reducing your chances.

Do nothing.

Exodi

Sorry I don't know how to sugarcoat it... that makes no mathematical sense and would be utterly pointless (well technically it would be detrimental as you'd have money out of a draw for a month).

£10k in any account will have the same odds of winning. There's no reason to conclude that because he has been lucky in the past, he will be lucky in the future, and if you do believe that then a quick trip to a casino will set you both straight.

FlorayG

I would be interested to find out why you even think that would be any advantage - currently you have X bonds between you, if you transfer you will have none and your husband will have X; the chances of you winning then are zero and the chances of your husband winning doubles but the chance of any one of those X bonds winning is EXACTLY THE SAME...except as has already been mentioned, your half transferred lose a month's chances

kempiejon

Perhaps the husband with twice as many bonds is winning twice as often.

Rusty190

Have you tried offering frankincense to the Roman goddess Abundantia? 😉

LHW99

If you each toss a penny 20 times, you may not get equal numbers of heads, despite both pennies giving the same change of either "winning" or "losing".

If you each toss them 1000 times, then the numbers of heads you each get will probebly be much closer to the same number (but not definately so, and not exactly).

You will have more than one bond each, but each individual bond will either win or lose.

The overall probabilities are different, but the effect works out in a similar manner.

BikingBud

StingyMinky said:

My husband and I both have premium bonds - he seems to win every month while I win every month or two (yes, it's extremely annoying!). We were thinking of cashing my bonds in (around £10k) and putting them into his account, but can't seem to work out if that's going to increase or decrease our odds. Anything with a mathematical or statistical calculation makes me run away - please can anyone advise? Thank you.

From NS&I:

Essentials at a glance:

Every £1 Bond entered into the prize draw has the same odds of winning, but the more Bonds you buy, the more chances you’ll have to win.
What are the odds of winning? - 22,000 to 1 for every £1 Bond in the monthly prize draw (variable)
What's the annual prize fund rate? - 3.80%, variable

What does that actually mean?

If you had £22k invested you might expect to get one prize, of whichever denomination it achieves, per month. You have 10K so expect to 10/22= 0.454 prizes per month or one just over every 2 months.

For every million pounds invested they pay out £38k per year.

80% of the prize fund is for prizes of  £100 or less eg for £25 prizes they expect 1,812,279 to be issued in Mar 2025 and just shy of 2 million £100 and 2 million £50 prizes

Of the 31 pages of high value winners (100 per page), winners with £50k ran to page 16 because they had an expectation of 50/22=2.273  of winning  which is 5* your chance.

But the bottom line is one ticket wins one prize. One of the Mar 25 £1 million winners had £35k and the other had £100.

But it is random.

StingyMinky

Rusty190 said:

Have you tried offering frankincense to the Roman goddess Abundantia? 😉

I hadn't yet considered that but will add to my to do list!