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.