The Lemon Fool

IC/Bearbull wrote:A weird little piece in a Sunday newspaper implied that a shortcoming of Premium Bonds is that a saver holding £100-worth would, on average, have to wait 3,500 years before there was an even’s chance of winning a £1,000 prize. That missed the great merit of Premium Bonds, especially for those affluent and smart enough to hold the £50,000 maximum.

Such folk are in the happy position of seeing their bonds as the equivalent of a generous savings account offering the kicker of a long-shot on big prizes. Underpinning this is a prize fund of 1 per cent, which makes its interest equivalent 10 times more generous than, for example, the NS&I’s Direct Savings account. So for those with the maximum holding of bonds, prizes still come at the rate of 1.45 times a month on average. Assume each prize received is for the minimum £25 – as are 98 per cent of the prizes that ‘Ernie’ distributes – then that works out as a 0.8 per cent annual yield, or 1.3 per cent equivalent for a 40 per cent taxpayer. For a zero-risk, almost-instant-access account, that’s not to be scoffed at.

Obviously, there is variation around that average. Even so, in assembling a long-term investment portfolio, Premium Bonds are an essential component of the low-risk tranche of capital, perhaps exceeded in importance only by NS&I Index-Linked Savings Certificates (‘Granny bonds’) for those still fortunate enough to be running those things.

yorkshirelad1 wrote:A little bit on Premium Bonds and Index-linked Savings Certificates by Bearbull in IC of 15 Oct 2021 (am just catching up with a backlog of reading!)

It's on the end of the article "The flattery industry" page 61

https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/news/2021/10/14/the-flattery-industry/
or via Google https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=investors+chronicle+flattery

IC/Bearbull wrote:A weird little piece in a Sunday newspaper implied that a shortcoming of Premium Bonds is that a saver holding £100-worth would, on average, have to wait 3,500 years before there was an even’s chance of winning a £1,000 prize. That missed the great merit of Premium Bonds, especially for those affluent and smart enough to hold the £50,000 maximum.

Such folk are in the happy position of seeing their bonds as the equivalent of a generous savings account offering the kicker of a long-shot on big prizes. Underpinning this is a prize fund of 1 per cent, which makes its interest equivalent 10 times more generous than, for example, the NS&I’s Direct Savings account. So for those with the maximum holding of bonds, prizes still come at the rate of 1.45 times a month on average. Assume each prize received is for the minimum £25 – as are 98 per cent of the prizes that ‘Ernie’ distributes – then that works out as a 0.8 per cent annual yield, or 1.3 per cent equivalent for a 40 per cent taxpayer. For a zero-risk, almost-instant-access account, that’s not to be scoffed at.

Obviously, there is variation around that average. Even so, in assembling a long-term investment portfolio, Premium Bonds are an essential component of the low-risk tranche of capital, perhaps exceeded in importance only by NS&I Index-Linked Savings Certificates (‘Granny bonds’) for those still fortunate enough to be running those things.

(I do still hold ILSC, and some that are still on RPI: hanging on...)