Premium Bond Winner ?

Ifts

SVts said:

How long does it take to process an order? Instantly? 

I use my debit card when I buy PB's (logged into my NS&I account) and it shows the date of the transaction as date of investment - so I would say yes that is instant.

Should I purchase now or ok to wait until April 30th?

No need to buy them now.

When buying PB's I always wait until the last day of the month (only day I have not tried it is on a BH), even if it does fall on a Sunday, the transaction has always gone through - on the transaction receipt the purchase date is shown as the date of investment, i.e. the last day of the month.               

Lomcevak

SVts said:

I'd like to buy 25k of premium bonds so I can qualify for the June draw. 

How long does it take to process an order? Instantly? Should I purchase now or ok to wait until April 30th?

As Ifts says, last day of the month is ok - although I would check that your bank allows a £25k debit card purchase, mine doesn't (capped at £10k per day). So I had to chunk my purchases up over a couple of days.

pbcpdeveloper

Are you already registered on their site ? If you are not then there may well be a delay as they may well send you out a pass code in the post  (if they still do this?). 

Otherwise you can buy them over the phone with a debit card, they say this can be done every day apart from bank holidays, so you should be able to buy them on Sunday 30th.

If there is a particular advantage to leaving it late then I personally try to go a few days ahead to allow for things going wrong, they do seem to have a few admin problems.

justwantedtosay

El_Torro said:

Holding stocks over that same period of time would have netted a much better return. 

Not necessarily. I put money into a fund 23 years ago and it now worth just 86% of the original sum. 

Yes, obviously, I should have taken it out but it's pretty much the case that whatever I do with my money is wrong [like the 1.25% fix I have money stuck in] so if I had moved it the original fund would have taken off and whatever I moved it to would have slumped. Three other funds of similar age have gained 42%, 144% and 545%. Shame I didn't put it all in the last one - but, of course, that was actually the one that I put least into and has probably only been allowed to do well to mock me for the other choices and would have failed had I put all my money into it.

Never mind though, I'm going to win the PB £1m next week. Most likely both of them 

retiringtoosoon

justwantedtosay said:

El_Torro said:

Holding stocks over that same period of time would have netted a much better return. 

Not necessarily. I put money into a fund 23 years ago and it now worth just 86% of the original sum. 

Yes, obviously, I should have taken it out but it's pretty much the case that whatever I do with my money is wrong [like the 1.25% fix I have money stuck in] so if I had moved it the original fund would have taken off and whatever I moved it to would have slumped. Three other funds of similar age have gained 42%, 144% and 545%. Shame I didn't put it all in the last one - but, of course, that was actually the one that I put least into and has probably only been allowed to do well to mock me for the other choices and would have failed had I put all my money into it.

Never mind though, I'm going to win the PB £1m next week. Most likely both of them 

Unfortunately You can’t win the £1m prizes next week, Ernie has already allocated them to me!

ForumUser7

@retiringtoosoon Ernie must’ve already reserved them for you!

Me: Make me win the premium bonds prize draw please

ChatGPT: I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I cannot manipulate or control the outcome of premium bond prize draws, as it is based on a random algorithm that ensures fairness to all participants. Winning a premium bond prize draw depends entirely on chance, and it is impossible to predict or influence the results.

The only way to increase your chances of winning is to own more premium bonds, as the more bonds you hold, the higher your chances of winning a prize. However, keep in mind that premium bonds are an investment, and like any investment, they carry risks and may not guarantee a return.

My advice would be to focus on saving and investing your money wisely, rather than solely relying on chance to win a prize draw. Good luck!

SVts

pbcpdeveloper said:

Are you already registered on their site ? If you are not then there may well be a delay as they may well send you out a pass code in the post  (if they still do this?). 

Otherwise you can buy them over the phone with a debit card, they say this can be done every day apart from bank holidays, so you should be able to buy them on Sunday 30th.

If there is a particular advantage to leaving it late then I personally try to go a few days ahead to allow for things going wrong, they do seem to have a few admin problems.

Already registered and have £300 of bonds. Reason for leaving as late as possible is money is currently with Chip earning 3.55%.

P1Fanatic

SVts said:

pbcpdeveloper said:

Are you already registered on their site ? If you are not then there may well be a delay as they may well send you out a pass code in the post  (if they still do this?). 

Otherwise you can buy them over the phone with a debit card, they say this can be done every day apart from bank holidays, so you should be able to buy them on Sunday 30th.

If there is a particular advantage to leaving it late then I personally try to go a few days ahead to allow for things going wrong, they do seem to have a few admin problems.

Already registered and have £300 of bonds. Reason for leaving as late as possible is money is currently with Chip earning 3.55%.

For the sake of 2-3 days less interest at 3.55% is it really worth the possibility of missing the cut off? I personally would leave a margin of error just in case.

El_Torro

justwantedtosay said:

El_Torro said:

Holding stocks over that same period of time would have netted a much better return. 

Not necessarily. I put money into a fund 23 years ago and it now worth just 86% of the original sum. 

Yes, obviously, I should have taken it out but it's pretty much the case that whatever I do with my money is wrong [like the 1.25% fix I have money stuck in] so if I had moved it the original fund would have taken off and whatever I moved it to would have slumped. Three other funds of similar age have gained 42%, 144% and 545%. Shame I didn't put it all in the last one - but, of course, that was actually the one that I put least into and has probably only been allowed to do well to mock me for the other choices and would have failed had I put all my money into it.

Never mind though, I'm going to win the PB £1m next week. Most likely both of them 

Without wanting to go into too much detail about the stock market (there are plenty of threads here already which do that) just thought I'd comment on this:

Yes, there'll be some funds which actually lose money, even over a period of 23 years. Hopefully you didn't have a huge amount of money in that particular fund, most of your investments should either be in or mimicking a global tracker or multi asset fund. 

You say that your funds over a 23 year period have returned:

14% loss
42% gain
144% gain
545% gain 

Rather than focusing on the fund that lost money you should be focusing on the average return of all the funds you own / owned. This will tell you whether the investment was worthwhile, not focusing on the worst performing one. 

No need to tell us your average return, just wanted to highlight the point that pointing out your worst performing fund and saying you would have been better off in Premium Bonds is not giving the full picture.

justwantedtosay

El_Torro said:

You say that your funds over a 23 year period have returned:

14% loss
42% gain
144% gain
545% gain 

Rather than focusing on the fund that lost money you should be focusing on the average return of all the funds you own / owned. This will tell you whether the investment was worthwhile, not focusing on the worst performing one. 

No need to tell us your average return, just wanted to highlight the point that pointing out your worst performing fund and saying you would have been better off in Premium Bonds is not giving the full picture.

Unfortunately the worst fund had by far the most money in it and the best one had least so the overall return wasn't much better than keeping it all under the mattress. I also put a little into another fund just a couple of years ago, one of Hargreave's wealth recommendations and with a good track record - that's down too. Never again!

And I didn't say I'd have been better off with PBs - I'm getting less than I should from those as well. (Not less than I'd like, less than I should by the law of averages accepting I'll not win any prizes over £100, and less than half the headline figure so far this year.)