Premium Bonds

Mishap if you have any savings at all, and they are not in Isas, you are simply giving the Government 25% of any interest you earn, that you could otherwise keep for yourself.
Even if you have to do a self-assessment form, you don't have to put ISAs on them because they're tax-free.
You don't have to tie your money up in ISAs either. There are instant access ones, though of course they pay a lower interest rate.

I have 10 premium bonds that I was given when I was in my teens. They have never won anything and nothing would induce me to buy any more.

I have some premium bonds and some ISA's that are fixed for a couple of years . Have you thought about a current acc that pays interest , I have the Santander 123 acc which pays 3% on anything over £2K up to £20K which is not a bad rate considering what some savings acc's pay now..

I wouldn't keep more than a couple of thousand in Premium bonds as its actually losing money just sitting there but like you I like the idea that I could win big... it ain't gonna happen though is it

I think ours over the last 12 months gave a return of just under 1%! It is quite fun getting the occasional envelope through the post - even if it is just another £25. I don't buy lottery tickets, so this is my flutter - and I still have the original deposit.

Yes Tanith, we have the 123 Santander account too, as well as the 3% interest on the balance, we get £6-8 a month in cashbacks on utility bills.

I've got some premium bonds. Forgot to inform them of my change of address. When I emailed them to ask how to update my contact info I had a nice reply telling me to get my parents to counter sign my letter as they had been the people buying them for me. Only snag -they both died years ago in their 80s! Not sure what to do now!

Just had an e-mail to say I have won three £25 prizes in the 1st January draw. Am quite happy even if it wasn't the 'big one'

DS won £1000 when he was 7. Unfortunately he then thought he was set for life and wouldn't need to work ever!

I won £50 on Premium Bonds last month. Yippee!

I won £25 x2 in December last year but zilch this month.

My OH says that we tried to open a Santander account before and you had to have a mobile phone number to access your money online (which is what we have to do as we live miles from a town) as they would send you a code to put in each time. As we have no mobile reception here it was a non-starter. Is this still how they do it?

Mishap I did need to give them my number to access my Acc on my phone but not for online access.. I would investigate again if I were you..I've been using my Acc online for years way before I even had a mobile phone. Online and mobile access are two different things..

Mishap I've had the Santander 123 a/c for a couple of years now, and I have a credit card to shop with and I can access money from the cash machine. If you can keep the a/c up to £20k, then the interest rate is one of the better ones.

Mishap the mobile phone bit comes in only if you want to pay someone online directly to their bank account.
For example, today I paid some money to my son and DiL, for their wedding anniversary. Instead of writing them a cheque, I made the payment online to their account.
When you make a payment to someone for the first time, the bank won't let you do it until you have put in a security code which they call a one-time password. (OTP) They text this to your mobile. It's a security precaution and the next time you pay that person, you won't have to use the passcode, because the bank's computer recognises that you've paid that person before.

But the 123 is not an online-only account. We have a branch and a 'relationship manager', but we never go into the branch or use her services because we do nearly everything online.

But we still have cheque books, and paying-in books - if someone gives me a cheque, I can pay it in by post or over the counter at a post office.
Hope that helps.

And you can use the debit card to get money from Post Offices as well as from cash machines.

It depends how much money you have to invest.
My sister's father-in-law was an investment manager at TSB, and he crunched all the figures. He decided that Premium Bonds were a good investment if you had enough. He collects all the spare family money and it is invested in different names each time.
It beats bank accounts and ISAs hands down. It is also tax free.
If you go on the site, you can look at all the big prizes and find out what the holding is each month for each big prize winner. Many of them have the maximum investment, whatever they say about each bond having an equal chance.

They mean each bond has the same chance as the next bond i.e. equal chance. It follows therefore that if you have a lot of bonds you have a lot of equal chances. Like buying a lot of raffle tickets - each one has a chance of winning and the more you have the more chances you have.

I have done a bit of trawling about online and it seems that PBs are better than anything else if you are a high rate tax payer - which I am not!

I will keep looking and see what it is best to do. The interest rates are all very low wherever you look. Thank you for the ideas.

Mishap

I think these sound quite good for anyone over 65... but my apologies if you aren't old enough!!! Supposedly being launched some time this month.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/pensioner-bonds

I had some Premium Bonds, but when my father died I wasn't sure which were mine and which were his. I told the solicitor, and when he said that he would sort it out I thought he meant that he would find out which were which. All he did was cash them all in without checking, so I ended up paying inheritance tax on my own money.

That is very interesting Joy - we do not rally want our money tied up, but the interest rates are so good that even if you withdraw early you are still quids in even with the 90 day interest penalty.

It's like playing the lottery, gagagran.
If you have 17, 19, 21, you notice if 16, 18, 20, 22 come up.
However, if you have 18, 19, 20, 21 you are more likely to hit one of them.
When you look at the statistics of the big wins, you can see how many 30,000 or 5,000 holdings appear in the lists. You can put them in order. You can also check to see if your county comes up more often than any other.

Are you trying to say it's a fix jen?

A 3,000 holding has 3,000 times as likely a chance to come up as a holding of just one.

Some counties have a larger population than others, or they buy more bonds. Perhaps they have more people living there who can afford to buy 3,000 bonds.

No need for any jiggery pokery for the wins to be unevenly distributed, or go more to those with large holdings, they go per bond not per bond-holder.

And it is not someone putting a hand into a drum and pulling out a name that they fancy.

My premium bond wins automatically get put back in buying more bonds and so far none of the little ones have won anything. All my wins have come from bigger blocks. So now, every year or so I cash in all those £25s and buy a block. My biggest win is £125 - but that was several years ago.