I give you £25…

[Nearlydone25]

… what would you do to increase its value long term?

If stocks, which ones?

I appreciate you may not be a financial advisor, but I’m not going to bankrupt myself if I lose £25. I’m willing to take a risk! 😁

Premium Bonds - you’ll never get back less than £25 and you might get more…

How? I have £20 of premium bonds (from my christening - I’m now 43), one literally got nothing from them.

£25? Not worth the effort, buy a bottle of Prosecco, Kettle Chips and scratchcards with the change.

The point being you can lose all
of your investment in stocks and bonds, but you can never get less than your original investment in Premium Bonds. But yes, sometimes you don’t win either, but you don’t get less.

I’d put it on the 3.15 at Kempton.

Ah I see.

Well, it is less if inflation is taken into account.

eg £20 given at a christening 43 years ago with zero prizes.

So withdraw it and do something else with it?

Vanguard VUSA, you can buy fractional units through Trading 212. Expect returns at an average of 12% a year.

Premium bonds are shit, £25 in 12 months time will be worth £25. Which in the real world will be less than it Is worth now due to inflation. Average return on PB is 4% ISH, probably a little less now. Unless you're really lucky and hold the maximum amount, it is a terrible 'investment'. The average person would get better returns from a cash ISA..

Crypto. It's very volatile, so who knows, you might strike lucky and get a good return if you buy and sell at the right time. If you don't, well, it's only £25.

Except that £20 as of 43 years ago invested in any kind of savings vehicle that managed to match inflation rates would be worth £71.73 now and even if the savings rate averaged at half of inflation it would be worth £45.87 whereas in Premium Bonds it would still be worth exactly £20 so it's really not "risk free" - although it's true that a lot of high-risk options could be worth exactly zero so it's less high risk than that.

@Nearlydone25 with £25 I would buy a multipack of something that I know a lot of people use/need regularly and would sell the individual items at a markup. What that "something" is will vary so much by person/place/time that it's not appropriate to speculate. e.g. a schoolchild who goes into school by bus can stop off at a sweet shop and buy £5 of sweets and then sell them to classmates who are driven door-to-door for at least £8 and make a nice profit. In an office context you could do similarly with a big box of doughnuts.

The point of premium bonds is that I might, just might, win a BIG prize.
It is like doing the lottery without having to bother buying tickets each month.

25 x £1 scratch cards or maybe a few £5 ones they seem to win quite often
Obviously short term fun, not long term investment unless you strike it lucky with the 100k or whatever

The point I was making was the one I literally outlined in my post: ":You can never get less than your original investment in Premium Bonds."

And also when I made my point I didn't know about a random £20 from 40 years ago, so neither was I talking about that, nor can you draw a comparison there.

I think it's a bit odd to ask for advice on potentially high risk investment strategies for the sake of £25, so I was giving the most solid advice for the amount being advanced...

Buy something that will be in demand at Christmas and sell it when it's sold out in early December.

Higher stakes but I bought the Lego typewriter on offer for £160, never got round to putting it together and then sold it for over £100 profit when it was retired.

I know it’s a bit random! I’ve set up an investment account for each of my children and nieces and nephews as an inheritance. I’m starting with £25, but plan to add to it at least annually. So I started researching stocks and shares a bit more ( my previous investments have been specific funds). Then I thought, maybe I ought to do one for myself in case I make a great decision 😂😂 so I was going to see what people thought, then I wondered if there was a better approach 🤷‍♀️

This. Buy Labubu shit and double your money. There are a couple of sellers on AliExpress who sell the genuine stuff. Takes about ten days to get here and you can double your money all day long on auction sites.

£20 isn't a lot so your chances of being drawn is very small.

I have £5k in premium bonds and have won around £250 this year. But £5k is a drop in the ocean, a family member had about £40k in premium bonds on their death.

I'd buy precious metals like gold bullion or silver coins for that amount.

OP.

A JISA invested in an ETF that tracks an index fund really is your best option

I've done this for my niece and nephew, 3 years has yielded a 40% return on the original investment, disregarding the growth on the additional invested.

In a decent fund the growth over 18 years would be significant.

S and.p 500

But be prepared to wait 10 years.

Buy a specific lego set or pokemon cards box
And keep it safe for 30 years.