PREMIUM BONDS JAN 25 .........

[Blondeshavemorefun]

New thread and I've been asked to give some basic info. Feel free to add stuff

PB have been about since 1957

Been 30yrs (April 2024) since a million was then the highest prize

nsandi-corporate.com/news-research/news/30-years-premium-bonds-ps1-million-jackpots#

Each bond is £1. You have to buy in minimum of £25 so means 25 chances to win every purchase - years ago you could buy £1 at a time.

Odds of winning £1 million on Premium Bonds at face value are 1 in 2,489,469,818 if you have £25 in PBs.

However most people have more than £25 so the odds depend on how much you do hold.

If you have £100 the odds in any given month are 1 in 49,563,028

£1,000 in PB the odds are 1 in 4,954,991

£50,000 in PB the odds are 1 in 96,839

To win anything odds are 1 in 22000

So providing you have more than £100 you have better odds than winning the lottery 😄

And obviously far better than the lottery - you don’t lose your stake !!!!!!

Bonds have to be in for a clear month before going into the draw

If you want to cash bonds in then usually takes 3 days to go into your account

Winnings can be reinvested if holdings are under £50k

This means they will go into the next months draw without losing a month

Or sent to named bank account if winnings take over FH /want winnings in bank account

More info here

www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/savings/types-of-savings/premium-bonds

The best time to buy premium bonds is on the last day of the month, as this means they are only held by NSI for one month and one day, without being entered into the prize draw.

PB to me is the fun and thrill each month of what if I win big and a millionaire - to then hoping win thousands to a day or two later being grateful if win £25😂

I have nowhere near the maximum and probably never will unless I win £50k + on pb

But only takes one £1 to win that million !!!

I love seeing the low holdings win high amounts

We've seen over the years £100 win £100k and £50 win £25k and even £1 won £10k

Maximum is £50k per person so some do have all for family- mum dad and 2 kids so £200k etx

Those on the thread are varying from few hundred /few thousand - to 20/30k to full holdings of £50k

Everyone is welcome to join in whether small or full holdings

One would expect if had full holdings of £50k to win something every month and think over the year to earn the same as if in a high interest account to win around £1925 in prizes

If have £5k average luck is £175 winnings a year

Obviously some people have better 'luck' than others and some worse - Ie full holdings and not winning anything a month or two or even longer

PB odds calculator below

moneymarvel.co.uk/calculators/premium-bonds/

Or this one is quite good as shows the interest rate of the winnings - obv anything over 4% is good as if in an account you wouid be taxed so be more like 3%)

In August 2023, NS&I hiked the prize fund to a 24-year high of 4.65 per cent from 4 per cent, a level not seen since 1999 🙀🙀🙀🙀

But it has been steadily falling since, and of January 2025, the prize fund rate - the amount of the total fund paid out in prizes - is 4 per cent (www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-14127405/Premium-Bonds-prize-fund-rate-cut-NS-deals-blow-savers.html)

www.candidmoney.com/calculators/national-savings-premium-bond-calculator

From google (august 2023) - The consistent winners are the 1.16 million people who have the maximum £50,000.

They hold almost half of all premium bonds and, at current odds of 1/22000 can expect a monthly stream of tax-free prizes: two a month and three almost every other month, 28 or 29 a year totaling £1,925

From google (Jan 2024) Tho equally With Premium Bonds, for every person who wins £1 million, a lot of people have to win nothing. So the median average will always be lower than the mean average.

This means that, with average luck, most people will win less than the prize rate each year, regardless of how many bonds they hold

To work out your own personal % rate

Take your total prizes, divide it by the number of months and x by 12.

Then divide that figure into your total holding and x 100.

So say £500 prizes in 6 months / 6 x 12 = £1000.

Holdings £30,000 = 1000/30000 x 100 = 3.33% interest rate.

But many on here do have £50k and then consider moving it to an account that pays 4% if their bonds aren't doing very well as would then def get extra money

But remember savings /interest get taxed

PB and their winnings don't

So anything over 3% in winnings is considered good.

So they do dither whether to pull out from pb and put in high interest account if not winning anything so that they will def earn x amount of interest

But then lose the what if won a million or £100k

If you have PB but not sure if you have ever won esp if moved about a lot

you can write to NS&I. Include these details in the letter:

	Current name

	Current address

	Premium Bond holder number 

	All previous addresses where you might have registered bonds

	Your signature 

You can send your letter to:

NS&I,
Sunderland
SR43 2SB.

There are 2 apps afaik

Cream - prize checker and if won previous month will show a pic - which we all get excited over 😂😂😂

Blue - the app its self works but the showing early often doesn't work for me but those who reinvest their winnings say it shows if won the day before app shows 🙀🙀🙀

Seems the higher the winnings the earlier it shows and can be from 6pm the night before the app shows

And to confuse things I have a White app that is a bookmark - which shows info/list 😄😄😄

Now this has been debated on MANY times but seems to be correct

When do we find out if going to get a visit from AM 😂

The two winners of 
the £1million prizes will be contacted by Agent Million (AM) 😂😂 the day before the first working day of the corresponding month.

There may however be 
exceptions to this, such as when the first working day of the month is a 
bank holiday, for example.

So

Day before first working day - Millionaire knock /call

First day of working month - list showing all winners million to £1k winners - which I always put up for those who can't find it

Day after first working day , including weekends - cream app showing all winnings

You can also check to see if have won via this link with your holders number

www.nsandi.com/prize-checker

Hopefully I've covered everything

Good luck one and all 😄

This thread constantly gets derailed by people arguing they aren’t the best investment.

WE KNOW! We know other options are available. Not everyone chooses the same things in life. It’s no one’s business where i save my money.

Just let us enjoy the ride each month. Many of us have small amounts and enjoy the thrill. We aren’t looking for your financial advice or how much you have elsewhere. I want to read and celebrate the wins!.

That is good news for me selfishly maybe but my mortgage rate expired just as it shot up to over 5%.

I managed to grab a cap and collar type mortgage hours before it removed.

Massive risk, but each drop meant it has reduced, I didn’t want to fix for 5 years. It expires in 12 weeks. My mortgage went from £495 to £800, it’s currently £700 so will drop again now.

I might look at fix options possibly again,

I had a win this month that maxed out my £50,000 allowance (auto-reinvest). I'm "owed" £250, does anyone know when this gets paid into my bank?

Same! I'm a very sensible accountant and run our household finances with more enthusiasm than anyone should, but I look forward to premium bonds day so much I'm overpaying massively into my pension and on track to retire at 55 so leave me to enjoy my flutter!

Rates go down and up, bank and Ni prize funds. It’s the way of things.

This thread constantly gets derailed by people arguing they aren’t the best investment.

WE KNOW! We know other options are available. Not everyone chooses the same things in life. It’s no one’s business where i save my money.

Just let us enjoy the ride each month. Many of us have small amounts and enjoy the thrill. We aren’t looking for your financial advice or how much you have elsewhere. I want to read and celebrate the wins!.

The NS&I website says within 7 working days.

It depends how much you've won though. The website says they send you a form first for the bigger prizes, so you would then elect to have x amount reinvested and the remaining £250 paid into your bank.

Exactly this.

The difference between making couple of extra pounds interest a month by using a savings account over premium bonds will make no difference to my life. Winning a prize of £25k+ would make a big difference.

This

meant to be a fun friendly thread

I used to get it around 7/9th

but now auto invest

Yep

I know many of us suspect that newer bonds are more likely to win. It seems to be true that they win more often but that is apparently only because there are far more of them. The vast majority - 97% - of PBs were bought from 2000 onwards, rather than 1957-1999.

From NS&I's page for financial advisers:
Are the winning bonds the ones bought more recently?
Each £1 Bond number has an equal chance of winning, regardless of when or where it was bought. Over 97% of eligible Bonds have been bought since the year 2000. So even though Premium Bonds have been on sale for over 60 years, this is why newer Bonds seem to win more frequently. When ERNIE randomly generates winners, it doesn’t store any numbers, so there’s no way any Bonds can be left out.

I know it says random but my winnings last year were mainly off reinvestments

Just shows the difference to yours - our 2 full holdings were bought before 2000 so we have had no reinvestments - pays for holidays. 😃

Agree - it's fun, and even when I get a bit grumpy at my lack of life-changing winnings, there's always the next draw to hope for.

I've found it tends to be around 10th. This happened to me a few months back - won £1,150, of which I think £200 took me to the £50k. I wasn't sure quite what would happen. But they did the reinvest to the £50k and transferred the remainder to my bank around 10th.

I get the complaints about random people popping in to point out the flaws with PBs but I've been on these threads for ages and I think in a different name started one of the early ones. I do think about alternatives and clearly a couple of others do too each month, I think you can't expect the thread to just be a monthly list of winnings with no side discussion.

I don’t mind folk saying where you get better interest rates. It’s how I found out about Chip. And probably about the fixed terms NS&I Bonds.

Agree about the NS&I fixed term bonds but I’ve taken a beating on the interest tax this time!
good to have options but fab to have tax free prizes.

I don't think anyone really minds people posting details of savings accounts with good interest rates. Like a PP said, it's good to hear about alternatives.

It's more the posters that pop up from time to time telling us how foolish we are for having PBs and don't we know we should be maxing ISAs and pensions first, like we are all silly women who couldn't possibly understand finances.

Like a lots of people have said, a few hundred pounds lost in interest is neither here nor there, really - for some of us it's worthwhile in order to have the opportunity to win big.

Thanks to a £1,000 win last year my overall PB rate was c7.6%. Tax free. Even without the £1k it would have been c4.8%. Which seems pretty reasonable to me 🤷‍♀️

What @RockaLock said. Far more eloquently then me

yes obv there are better interest guaranteed accounts

and maybe maxing out isa and pensions makes more sense if have £50k +

Seems half and half. Many on here have £50k + stashed and even more if dh /kids have it

Equally many like me may not have lots but in it for the what if

It's more the posters that pop up from time to time telling us how foolish we are for having PBs and don't we know we should be maxing ISAs and pensions first, like we are all silly women who couldn't possibly understand finances.

^^i agree with this. But as a regular poster who gets disillusioned I like chatting options with others

Tho do you move @Phase2ot stay another month just incase 😂

It's just coming up to the end of our first year with PBs, discounting the tiny PB bought for me as a child which I've still to track down. I've learnt a lot from these threads - many thanks to the OP and others - about PBs, and I've enjoyed all the fun and the supportive atmosphere along the way as we all ride this PB rollercoaster together. I like the fact that the threads attract a wide variety of people, with holdings of all sizes and different reasons for having PBs. Everyone seems equally welcome, celebrated with and commiserated with.

I don't mind the posts about different interest rates and investments at all because I sometimes learn something or it gives me something to consider. Those posts are easy enough anyway to scroll past and onto the next fun winning - or gloomy losing! - one. I also don't mind at all the discussions and suggestions from posters trying to be helpful. The only things that I really don't want from these threads are AIBU-style arguments or posters being made to feel foolish.

Are we there yet?! Only just over 3 weeks to go now folks...

Yeah I always think about it. Decided to leave the £11k and top up elsewhere for now. So will still be here for the end of month drama