Premium Bond Winner ?

Macsidia

My reaction to the Premium Bonds rate increase to 3.7%

Any kind of increase is always welcomed from me and yeah it was probably a bit overdue to be fair. It's still behind the market leading rates but at least it closes up the gap somewhat. What I would like to see is perhaps a little rebalancing at the top prizes, a 3rd £1m prize and perhaps some £250K's between the £1m & £100K's.

I know Premium Bonds aren't the best place for my savings as regular 20% tax payer but I use Premium Bonds as an alternative to the National Lottery having had previous issues with gambling several years ago.

eskbanker

Macsidia said:

What I would like to see is perhaps a little rebalancing at the top prizes, a 3rd £1m prize and perhaps some £250K's between the £1m & £100K's.

If you look far enough back in this thread you'll find posts expressing exactly the opposite, i.e. 'why not split up one of the two £1m prizes into £25s and create more winners', but either way round, posting hypothetical wishes on here is unlikely to influence NS&I's decisions!

Macsidia

eskbanker said:

Macsidia said:

What I would like to see is perhaps a little rebalancing at the top prizes, a 3rd £1m prize and perhaps some £250K's between the £1m & £100K's.

If you look far enough back in this thread you'll find posts expressing exactly the opposite, i.e. 'why not split up one of the two £1m prizes into £25s and create more winners', but either way round, posting hypothetical wishes on here is unlikely to influence NS&I's decisions!

Yeah true. Different people are looking for different things. If I was looking for smaller payouts of more £25's then the money would be in Tandem.

ukbren

I've won nothing this year on £8k.  This news is a bit meh to me, as I'm just as likely to continue to win nothing.  I had a reasonable run of luck last year until they increased the prize rate and reduced the number of £25 prizes so I would certainly be in the "more £25 prizes" camp when they increase the prize rate.

eskbanker

ukbren said:

I've won nothing this year on £8k.  This news is a bit meh to me, as I'm just as likely to continue to win nothing.  I had a reasonable run of luck last year until they increased the prize rate and reduced the number of £25 prizes so I would certainly be in the "more £25 prizes" camp when they increase the prize rate.

Just to be clear, they only reduced the £25 prizes by replacing them with the same number of higher value prizes!  The total number of prizes (relative to the number of bonds) has remained the same, hence the chances being 24,000 to one for each bond in each draw since last October, which was an improvement over what had gone before....

lb364

Must be a good month for MSE members I won £10k ☺️ Looked myself up on the high value prize winners and was more excited for the person with a £2 bond from 1959 that won £10k, how excited must they have been!

llewdiskram

lb364 said:

Must be a good month for MSE members I won £10k ☺️ Looked myself up on the high value prize winners and was more excited for the person with a £2 bond from 1959 that won £10k, how excited must they have been!

Congratulations!

You must be over the moon. Do you have to fill out a claim form as well or will it be credited to your account?

justwantedtosay

Macsidia said:

My reaction to the Premium Bonds rate increase to 3.7%

Any kind of increase is always welcomed from me and yeah it was probably a bit overdue to be fair. It's still behind the market leading rates but at least it closes up the gap somewhat. What I would like to see is perhaps a little rebalancing at the top prizes, a 3rd £1m prize and perhaps some £250K's between the £1m & £100K's.

The trouble with that is that the chance of winning a million is so very close to zero that adding another would really make no difference. If they made it ten £1m prizes a month you'd still be very unlikely to win one jackpot in a dozen lifetimes with a full holding - with two a month it's once in 100,000 years - and the odds are against you ever winning even £5,000 unless you're given 50,000 bonds as a child and live to a really good age. 

I can never settle on how I'd like the prizes to change; I hate months when I get nothing and then I wish there were more small prizes so that happened less often. But then it's hard to get too excited about £25 and if it's all small prizes it's really just a savings account. The proportion of £500 and £1,000 prizes has gone down* compared to others between £50 and £100,000 and most often I think that's wrong as these amounts would be very welcome to most of us - certainly to me! - but not so unlikely that you can dismiss the hope of winning one as you can the bigger prizes, especially if they restored the balance. I think I'd be happy if they kept the bigger prizes the same when the rate next increases - or even had fewer (because half of no chance is still no chance) - ditched the £25 prizes, and put all the money saved into more £500 and £1,000 prizes. That way you could reasonably hope for a middling prize every year with a full holding.

One thought I had was to have a £5m prize in December or January for bonds that have been held for at least a year. Obviously the chance of winning would be infinitesimal but something to dream about. It might attract more funds and stop people dipping in and out as often which would be good for NS&I, though I guess it means a slightly smaller chance of winning anything.

Another thought, that is probably completely impracticable, was to have two draws that you could choose between or be put into according to the number of bonds you hold. Both would give the same overall return but the new one would primarily be for people with a lot of bonds who really don't want to be bothered with £25 prizes and would put all the small prize money into bigger wins, maybe £1,000 up, so you'd win much less often but the prizes would be worth having and still come often enough with a big holding. The attraction would be if the bigger prizes, maybe £10,000 up, made up a bigger proportion of the fund so there was a much greater chance of a really good win. This couldn't be universal as people with small holdings would be even more unlikely to ever win anything. Presumably it costs NS&I something to send the prize money, even electronically, so this would save them money - which they could use to give more prizes! There are obvious problems, such as would there be enough in each draw to give £1m in each if it were down to choice?

Back in the real world, after Thursday's base rate rise and another 50bps forecast for August I'm sure we can expect another increase the prize rate before too long which can't be a bad thing however they choose to distribute it - well, within reason. I think it's happened before that NS&I announces an increase just before the BoE announcement - I wonder why; in the hope we don't notice they are actually only just getting round to reacting to previous base rate rises...?

Excuse the waffle, it's too darned hot to anything else.

* Since the prize rate was 1% the chance of winning a £100 prize has gone up 100-fold, £100,000 nearly 12-fold but a £1,000 prize only about 7-fold. (You know you shouldn't trust my arithmetic.)

gt94sss2

Macsidia said:

My reaction to the Premium Bonds rate increase to 3.7%

Any kind of increase is always welcomed from me and yeah it was probably a bit overdue to be fair. It's still behind the market leading rates but at least it closes up the gap somewhat. What I would like to see is perhaps a little rebalancing at the top prizes, a 3rd £1m prize and perhaps some £250K's between the £1m & £100K's.

I suspect more would be happier if the odds of winning a prize went back to 20,000:1 as they were some years ago.

I can see this happening as interest rates continue to rise.. though back then the minimum prize was £50

Increasing the number of £1m prizes as you suggest would reduce the overall number of prizes each month by quite a bit..

auser99

NS@I could do with increasing the rate on the ISA and the 1 and 3 year bonds too.
Wonder how many people bother to use a 1 year bond at 4% or a 3 year at 4.2% when the markets are creeping closer to 6%