Should you stick your money in Premium Bonds, a savings account or invest?
This is Money Podcast
This is Money
4.1 • 650 Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2024
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The prize fund rate is being cut to 4.4 per cent from 4.65 per cent.
That edges the average return - which you may or may not get - from Premium Bonds further below the best savings deals, so should you save instead?
Or would many Premium Bond holders be better off investing?
On this podcast episode, Georgie Frost, Lee Boyce and Simon Lambert discuss whether Premium Bonds stack up.
Plus, as the US securities regulator aproves bitcoin ETFs, is the price now headed for $200,000 as some suggest, or could this be enticing more naive investors into the volatile world of crypto that's been dogged by fraud?
Later, Lee reveals his car insurance woes - and shares tips on how to deal with your own renewal quite pain.
And finally, find out who on the podcast team is not drinking for January, who is taking an extremely haphazard approach to it, and who is planning to go all the way to Easter, as we discuss the no and low-alcohol beer boom and the ones we rate the best.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to This Is Money Podcast. I'm Georgie Brosten, joining me and Simon Lambert. |
| 0:07.5 | Today is Lee Boyce. And coming up, premium bonds are to get a little less tasty from March, |
| 0:13.5 | so how do they stack up now against other savings products? Big news for Bitcoin, but how will |
| 0:18.9 | a decision in the US affect investors over here? |
| 0:21.6 | Also today could millions of drivers be owed compensation in another PPI-sized scandal? |
| 0:27.6 | And 0% beer, it's for life, not just for dry January. |
| 0:31.6 | Don't be getting stopped to date with all the latest breaking money news, just go to this ismoney.co. |
| 0:36.6 | .0.uK or download the app. |
| 0:39.0 | But first, poor lay voice. Zilch. Zilch from his premium bonds in the last 18 months. |
| 0:47.3 | And the chances of him winning big in the next 18 months are looking a little bit slimmer. |
| 0:52.2 | From March, the prize fund has been cut to 4.4% from the 24-year high of 4.65%. The odds of being a winner will remain the same at 21,000 to 1, but there will be fewer big prizes. |
| 1:08.6 | Lee Boys, you were discussing premium bonds. last week. That's where we discovered. I won big |
| 1:15.7 | with 50. It wasn't big. But anyway, Lee, explain, how does the rate on premium bonds actually work? |
| 1:24.5 | Because it's not as simple as a savings account rate, is it? So what does this mean that's |
| 1:28.6 | being cut from 4.65 to 4.4? Yeah, so it doesn't work like an interest rate does on a traditional |
| 1:36.0 | savings account. I think that's probably the crucial piece of information that people should |
| 1:39.9 | wrap their heads around. So yeah, last week I was talking about how I've got premium bonds and didn't |
| 1:43.9 | win a prize whatsoever. So my interest rate last year on my premium |
| 1:47.4 | bonds was a big fat 0%. What it is really this rate is it's almost like a kind of barometer |
| 1:54.4 | of what they're doing with the prizes and I and how many prizes are out there and how they |
| 1:59.5 | split the prizes down. |
| 2:01.6 | And basically, some people will get under that rate, advertised rate, and some people will get far higher than that rate. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from This is Money, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of This is Money and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.