Premium Bond Win

Around the time I was born in 1971 I was given £7 in premium bonds, each bond £1 in value.

None of those 7 bonds has ever one a prize ... until now!

One came in with a £25 win. So I thought I'd see just how lucky I've been.

Currently, the minimum purchase of premium bonds is £100 (ie 100 units, they are still a £ each)

Since October 2009, the odds per £1 unit winning any prize has been 24,000 to 1

If you have 'average luck' the rate of return should equal 1.50%. All prizes are tax-free

So what is my £1 from 1971 worth? Well, I have data available till 2010. In 2010, £1.00 from 1971 is worth


£11.00 using the retail price index or £19.60 using average earnings

So my £25 looks good value, but of course the other £6 of bonds have never won, so I am about level.
An alternative way of looking at it, without getting complicated or worrying about inflation , is just to divide the £25 return by the number of years held (call it 40) and that gives 0.625% on average (again, forget compounding!) a year.
So on that score, I'm about 2.5x less lucky than average.

Fingers crossed for the £million prize next month then...