Premium Bonds - anyone bought any?

[krugerparkrules]

My dh was made redundant and got a payout from his old company. He was lucky to find a new position. We wanted to put this redundancy money away, as the profession he works in is still volatile and we might need it in a few months time if things dont work out.
So we need something/somewhere where we can invest the money, that it is secure i.e. not to be lost should a bank collapse. Savings accounts offer very little, and a friend suggested to me that we put it in Premium Bonds - you dont get any interest - but are put into a lotto type situation every month?
I have no knowledge of these - has anyone done them, and then sold them again (has this been easy) would you recommend them - or else if anyone else knows of what they would do with a lump sum of money that needed to be packed away, and protected, i would be grateful for any suggestions ....

in my experience premium bonds r ur best bet,u can save up to invest up to £30.000 tax free.
there is no interest but u premium bond numbers r put into a prize draw each month to win between £25 and £1000000 !
it is easy to cash them in wen u no longer want to incest, simply pick a form up from post office , fill it in then send off and wait to either get the money in the form of a cheque or there maybe an option to get it transfered straight 2 ur bank, depending on amount. we have just cashed some of ours in, it only took about 2 weeks 2 get our money back.
good luck in deciding

Yes, we've had some for about 5 months. Only won £100 so far and we bought quite a lot. Not a very good return but we were only buying them for short term. Martin Lewis is good for this sort of advice, see here

I'd definitely recommend them, and even more so with the interest rate being so low. It's very easy to get your money back, you just have to fill in a simple form

If you have the full allocation of £30,000 the 'odds' are that you will win £50 a month but of course this is not guaranteed. I had £30k worth (ah, those were the days ) for 6 draws and I won £250

I'd do it again if I had the money

I keep my "rainy day" money in premium bonds, and get any winnings automatically reinvested. IME you need a decent amount (£15k plus) before there is a regular supply of prizes. The NS&I website or the leaflet from the Post Office will tell you the current rate of return and prizes are tax free. The return is not great, but not many rates of return are, and there is always that faint hope that one month you will get the £1m jackpot.

We have some premium bonds for the boys as well. DS2 is a lucky little soul who wins more than his fair share of prizes. I think you can buy and sell them for your children until the children are 8 (maybe 12) but after that only the children can sell them.

thanks for that info, will definately look into these .....

I'd happily put short term money in them, especially with current interest rates being so low - even if you don't win you are hardly losing out and you have a possiblilty of winning.

I wouldn't put all my money into them long term, but they may form part of a portfolio.

I would also think about putting your cash the ISA allowance into an ISA (duh!) - £3,600 each for this year.

We've just put a large lump sum into premium bonds, as a short term thing. Our thinking was that interst rates are so low that savings accounts aren't really that attractive, and there is a chance we could actually win some money. Very easy to cash in when we want to put the money somewhere else (or spend it).

I used to have them years ago and won 3 times over the space of about 5 years.