Premium Bond Winner ?

brewerdave

Poor month for us; £125 for me , nothing for 'er indoors on full holdings. Dropped below 4% for the year 

Kim_13

justwantedtosay said:

NS&I are clearly looking at making changes to the prize allocation, right up to changing the number of £1m prizes.

What does everybody think about this? 

Does anyone agree with my view that winning a million is soooo unlikely [if the first animal on earth - some microscopic thing that wasn't quite still a plant - had bought a bond there's only about a 10% chance it would have the jackpot by now at the current rates] that there's no point having more - double zip still being zip? 

And that £25 and even £50 isn't worth winning nowadays, especially as you really have to have quite a few to stand much chance of winning even that, so the chance of it going to someone who would notice it is extremely thin? 

With one jackpot and no £25 or £50 prizes I'd vote for considerably increasing the number of £100 prizes and having a few more £5k-50K ones [the chance of winning £100,000 is so slim that with a FH it's one win in about 3,000 years and will be worse come December, so it's not worth thinking about] but putting most of the freed money into £500 and £1,000 prizes which most  people, even with a FH, would see as good day, but would then be regular enough with a larger holding and a more realistic hope for those with smaller holdings. 

I don’t mind £25 prizes, even though the lowest was £50 when I first bought bonds. They mean that more people get something instead of a blank. £25 on FH last month was disappointing, sure, but better than the zilch I got in April. 

I fully support the removal of the 2nd million - it’s a poor use of funds when times are hard, and was removed following the recession. The headline benefit of a chance to win a million is still there with one. A second benefits one person rather than many, many more. We don’t know what people’s circumstances are and a £25 win might mean they don’t have to skip meals this week. 

justwantedtosay

Kim_13 said:

We don’t know what people’s circumstances are and a £25 win might mean they don’t have to skip meals this week. 

Someone with 500 bonds 'should' currently expect to win £25 once in 42 years so it wouldn't be wise to rely on it to pay for their meal. And if they were unable to feed themselves surely they would have cashed in their premium bonds already.

fuzzzzy

Middle_of_the_Road said:

SandyN21 said:

Middle_of_the_Road said:

SandyN21 said:

My total win so far for 2025 has been £2,075 - so what would be my % please?

If you were to win no more prizes this year, your return would be 4.15%

Thanks for replying.  Please could you tell me what formula do I use to work this out in the future?

Calculate the Annual Gross Interest Rate 

• Formula: Gross Interest Rate = (Total Interest / Initial Deposit)
• Calculation: £2,075 / £50,000 = 0.0415
• Result: The annual gross interest rate is 4.15%.

Just to be clear to SandyN21, your actual interest rate for 10 months to date will be 4.15 * 12/10 = 4.98%

Kim_13

justwantedtosay said:

Kim_13 said:

We don’t know what people’s circumstances are and a £25 win might mean they don’t have to skip meals this week. 

Someone with 500 bonds 'should' currently expect to win £25 once in 42 years so it wouldn't be wise to rely on it to pay for their meal. And if they were unable to feed themselves surely they would have cashed in their premium bonds already.

I’d imagine many small holdings have either been forgotten about or represent someone putting money where they can’t spend it, because having no savings whatsoever causes anxiety. £25 could come as a very welcome surprise.

justwantedtosay

Kim_13 said:

I’d imagine many small holdings have either been forgotten about or represent someone putting money where they can’t spend it, because having no savings whatsoever causes anxiety. £25 could come as a very welcome surprise.

But so slim a chance that it's really not worth thinking about, and if they've forgotten they've got them there's a good chance NS&I won't have up to date contact details and they'll never know they won a prize. Anyway, I said there should be considerably more £100 prizes and that would be an even more welcome surprise for anyone who is hanging on to a few bonds when they really should have put the money somewhere else.

Primrose

Yes,  the chances of winning prizes will certainly be smaller but at least the winnings are tax free and with an increasing number of people being sucked into the tax paying bracket,including pensioners,   apart from ISAs, premium bonds are the only other savings source which is tax free.   Some people will still remain invested in premium bonds for this reason

Primrose

i for one would welcome more prizes around he £500 mark.  The chances of winning a million pounds are so remote as to be off the radar whereas winning £500 would still be a useful sum to most people.

dasherman

£150(100x1, 50x1) on full holding.

4.50% return over the last 12 months.

Middle_of_the_Road

Vitor said:

Chance of £1 bond winning £1M per year, 1 in 5.4 billion.
Chance 20 heads in a row with a fair coin, 1 in 1,048,576.
Chance being murdered in England & Wales per year, 1 in 105,000.

Good luck, everyone

Well they do say these things happen in 3s😵‍💫