kissngate
No wins for me for a while. I cashed in most of my bonds and bought newer ones in the hope they would do better but they haven't won a penny. Will give them six months then withdraw if no different and invest in a fixed interest account now that rates have improved.
ERNIE is a random number selector. It doesn’t matter how many bonds you hold or when they were bought. Every bond has the same chance of winning. The number of prizes vary each month depending on the total on number of eligible bonds.
Currently, there are over 86 billion bonds (April 2023). That number has dropped since October 2021. That was the 65th anniversary of ERNIE where there were over 113 billion bonds in the draw.
Chances of winning? For March 2023, there were, for example, 1,406,020 prizes of £50 and 2,140,178 prizes of £25.
Bond holders had a 1 in 41,919 chance of winning £50 and a 1 in 24,000 chance of winning £25.
www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/premium-bonds/
If you went to watch a sell out football match at Chelsea Football Club at Stamford Bridge (capacity 41,841) you could be the one person in the crowd who won £50.
If you went to watch a sell out Test Match or T20 final game at Edgbaston Cricket Ground (capacity 24,800) you could be the one person in the crowd who won £25.
Obviously, the more bonds you hold, the better chance you have of winning. It’s no different to buying a strip or strips of raffle tickets. You may still end up winning nothing.
I’m living proof that it’s possible to hold the maximum, which was £30,000 at the time, and win nothing. My 30,000 bonds were in 24 draws and didn’t win a bean. I cannot be unique in that. It shows that it’s all down to luck and some are just luckier than others.
