Premium Bond Winner ?

Section62

jak22 said:

...

What is real is the rate of return is now below ISAs and even normal fixed accounts. Some fixed ISAs taken now can continue to be funded in future tax years even if rates on new accounts drop - so perhaps now it is time to start thinking about moving from PBs.

Apples and oranges.  PB's aren't fixed and have no withdrawal penalty, so can count as easy access savings e.g. for an emergency account.  Moreover, for many who might put significant amounts into PB's they are probably investing as well, in which case changes to CGT mean it might be significantly more advantageous to use ISA allowances for investments rather than savings.

The unique nature of PB's can make them particularly attractive to one person, whilst they might have limited value for someone else with broadly similar circumstances.  My own view is that broad-brush "people should think about 'x'" statements don't work well with Premium Bonds.

Dizzycap

Section62 said:

Dizzycap said:

 

...and decided to get interest on my money rather than nothing

All the best to those who hold PB and I wish you all well with all your winnings

Thank you.  I'm finishing 2024 enjoying a 30% tax-free income from my PB holding.  That's quite a bit more than normal, but even if I win £0 in the whole of 2025 I'll still be averaging well above what I'd get from any standard savings account.

Premium Bonds aren't for everyone, but once in a while you can get lucky. That is part of the fun  

PBs aren't for me and I decided that I would rather gain something, even if it's in a tax free cash ISA @ 5.17%.

The other amounts that I have stated are my OH & one of my childrens holdings. They seem to have won once between them, but not me. So out of my portfolio 10k worth of PB go!

After a very heated exchange with NS&I about being locked out of my account due to their system error last week, they finally reset my details so that I could gain access immediately and cash in my holding, which I did on Monday.

The tax free saving space I have now set-up is  waiting for the funds which should arrive tomorrow.

For me, the best part of the PB results is when someone who has a very low holding £5-100 that they've held for years wins 5,10 or 25K - Good on them! Well, I now have a £1 holding

Still, it could have been worse. At least NS&I recognise that I have PB numbers, unlike a few reported in the tabloids recently!

justwhat

No win for my wife or myself this month. First time in ages this has happened.

polymaff

RG2015 said:

polymaff said:

RG2015 said:

Lady luck is always hard to fathom. I had a £10,000 holding for about 2 years and won £125 in that time. I then reduced it to £5k and won nothing for a year so reduced it to £1k. 

Needless to say I won nowt for 2 years. Then this October I bumped it up to £6k and won £50 this month.

I assumed it was from the new £5k holding, but no, it was on the £1,000 holding that had been there for the whole 5 years.

It is hard to believe that my new luck was nothing to do with increasing my holding from £1k to £6k.

I'm not sure that "Lady Luck" has anything to do with it - and if ever a quirk is identified, it will be something mundane in NS&I's software surrounding the random number generator.  NS&I have a long history of getting its software wrong.

polymaff 

An interesing hypothosis and as I see it there are two alternatives.
1. An outcome with the correct identification of the winning bond number.
2. An outcome that incorrectly identifies the winning bond number caused by a software error.
It is also possible that the identification of the winning bond number is viewed by NS&I as unimportant and hence not subject to rigourous software validation.
It is my choice what to believe irrespective of the truth which we will never know.

Well, yes, but your two classes are 1. it works; 2. it doesn't work.  What we need to know is 2.01, 2.02, 2.03 etc.  As you imply, NS&I will try to keep their incompetence well-hidden.

Two weeks ago I asked NS&I about my Direct Saver and Income Bond accounts.  About 30 seconds into the conversation the NS&I agent stated that I should put all of my money into the Direct Saver account as its interest rate is the higher of the two.  When I replied that both accounts generate the same return - look at their AERs - the agent got quite flustered.

Then there's NS&I's bonkers description of how they work out the interest earned by Inflation Linked Saving Certificates.  They only stated it correctly after their bosses (HM Treasury) instructed them to do so.

Likewise with the certificates of interest paid in a particular Financial Year and - again - I had to use HMT to batter NS&I to send be the correct figures.  Mind you, after six months of repeated failures to deliver correct documentation, NS&I's comment was that I had to understand that these figures were being hand-calculated and so were liable to error. When I asked NS&I if they intended to correct their faulty process NS&I responded thet they weren't.  What they were going to do was to remove the statement on the certificates that told the customer that this statement contained important data that they may need to fill in their HMRC Income Tax Return.  And so they did.

That tells you how much trust you can have in NS&I.  Totally unfit for purpose.

RG2015

polymaff said:

RG2015 said:

polymaff said:

RG2015 said:

Lady luck is always hard to fathom. I had a £10,000 holding for about 2 years and won £125 in that time. I then reduced it to £5k and won nothing for a year so reduced it to £1k. 

Needless to say I won nowt for 2 years. Then this October I bumped it up to £6k and won £50 this month.

I assumed it was from the new £5k holding, but no, it was on the £1,000 holding that had been there for the whole 5 years.

It is hard to believe that my new luck was nothing to do with increasing my holding from £1k to £6k.

I'm not sure that "Lady Luck" has anything to do with it - and if ever a quirk is identified, it will be something mundane in NS&I's software surrounding the random number generator.  NS&I have a long history of getting its software wrong.

polymaff 

An interesing hypothosis and as I see it there are two alternatives.
1. An outcome with the correct identification of the winning bond number.
2. An outcome that incorrectly identifies the winning bond number caused by a software error.
It is also possible that the identification of the winning bond number is viewed by NS&I as unimportant and hence not subject to rigourous software validation.
It is my choice what to believe irrespective of the truth which we will never know.

Well, yes, but your two classes are 1. it works; 2. it doesn't work.  What we need to know is 2.01, 2.02, 2.03 etc.  As you imply, NS&I will try to keep their incompetence well-hidden.

Two weeks ago I asked NS&I about my Direct Saver and Income Bond accounts.  About 30 seconds into the conversation the NS&I agent stated that I should put all of my money into the Direct Saver account as its interest rate is the higher of the two.  When I replied that both accounts generate the same return - look at their AERs - the agent got quite flustered.

Then there's NS&I's bonkers description of how they work out the interest earned by Inflation Linked Saving Certificates.  They only stated it correctly after their bosses (HM Treasury) instructed them to do so.

Likewise with the certificates of interest paid in a particular Financial Year and - again - I had to use HMT to batter NS&I to send be the correct figures.  Mind you, after six months of repeated failures to deliver correct documentation, NS&I's comment was that I had to understand that these figures were being hand-calculated and so were liable to error. When I asked NS&I if they intended to correct their faulty process NS&I responded thet they weren't.  What they were going to do was to remove the statement on the certificates that told the customer that this statement contained important data that they may need to fill in their HMRC Income Tax Return.  And so they did.

That tells you how much trust you can have in NS&I.  Totally unfit for purpose.

polymaff 

Many thanks for this. I have noted your concerns for future reference.

polymaff

RG2015's quotation of my post has zero paragraph spacing - which is exactly how I typed it, in order to make its appearance, once posted, show as single-line paragraph spacing - like wot the rest of you don't do.

What a truly carp website MSE Forum is - particularly since MSE foisted the latest "improved" version upon us.

Hoenir

Interesting as the discussion may be. This thread is report prizes won. Suggest nicely that debate is taken to a more suitable thread. 

polymaff

It is relevant to all threads that users learn to adapt to the MSE software's habit of heavily inflating the posts they make.  A good example is a post of 4th December at 6:24 PM - barely one word per post line.  HTH.

brewerdave

Just totalled up this calendar year's winning for myself and OH. We have won £4200, having started the year with ~ £95k , and have topped up to finish with £100k in holdings. Difficult to work out the percentage return but I'm not expecting next year to be anywhere near as good !

eskbanker

brewerdave said:

Just totalled up this calendar year's winning for myself and OH. We have won £4200, having started the year with ~ £95k , and have topped up to finish with £100k in holdings. Difficult to work out the percentage return but I'm not expecting next year to be anywhere near as good !

Unless your holdings dropped significantly below £95K en route to £100K then the percentage return must have been between 4.2% and 4.4%, does it need to be any more accurate than that?