€25k invested in prize bonds

Congratulations. Your saved Prize Bond numbers have won €75.00 since you last logged in. Streak week 9 - hope I'm not jinxing it by mentioning this.

@dxhound2005

Spot on. The following are two bonds I had (now sold) from that period.

Just looking for a recommendation, I have 30k to put away as a non risk investment. The 5yr State Savings would give €2,700 interest after the 5 years.

Do people think it would be better to invest it in bonds?

For me, it is probably a bit more fun as if I even got 1K over the 5 years that would be ok whilst we dream of getting a decent prize!!

Nothing in February on €70k, nothing in 2024.

So they removed the word "early" from "The Prize Bond Tracker will be removed in early 2024"

Great achievement in fairness.

Congratulations!

Your saved Prize Bond numbers have won €150.00 since you last logged in.

The number of €75 prizes in the March draws is 9,241 down from 9,276 in February. The newest bond to win on 02 February was BFV413611, newest 01 March BGA272878. Sales of around €30.37 million.

Looks like I jinxed it 😪

With the prizes set for the 5 draws in March, I did a count of the first 26 draws with the 1% interest rate.

Total prizes €23,279,575. Of which 242,661 x €75 = €18,199,575. Which is 78.1783% of the prizes by money. If it was just big prizes, and interest instead of €75's, every €100K would get €781.73 interest in a year. My 5 monthly small samples produced figures between €706.68 and €803.40, average €752.40. Every way round, average luck will get 10 x €75 prizes in a year for someone with €100K.

Doubling the prize figure to €46,559,150 to represent 1% of the fund, would make the fund €4,655,915 million (€4.6xx billion) in March 2024. Compared to the verified figure at the end of 2022, €4.6946 billion. The decrease in €75 prizes is from 9,468 in October 2023 to 9,241 in March 2024, 227 reduction in 6 months.

Welcome back to the real world. 😀

Was looking at Raisin.. do you have experience? All good? Worth doing?

Nice surprise today, while checking bank account and €75euro payment from Prize Bonds, no win showed on the tracker Friday afternoon so a first win for 2024.

€75 for me.

There is a change on the site. The new set up allows a search of ranges, and it returns results for 4 years, a combination of winners and unclaimed prizes. I expect it will be a rolling 4 years, as the earliest date available today is 13 March 2020. Any older unclaimed prizes are listed at the end, but with no draw date given. It is a bit of an improvement as it was only possible to look back six months for winners before, and unclaimed prizes never showed any date.

The other menu which can access the full draw details for the last 26 draws, is still there. So I should be able to continue doing counts. But in case that changes, I will note the newest bond to win each draw. On 08 March 2024 it is BGB728537.

It really is the luck of the draw, pardon the pun.

My 2022 winnings were two and a half times my 2021 winnings, on the same holding and similar prize structure. (If anything the 2021 winnings should have been slightly higher).

It's often struck me that the winnings are less consistent/predictable than they ought to be, statistically. The draws are conducted exclusively by software. And as anybody who knows anything about software development will know it is largely a human endeavour and subject to error. And while I am sure that they test the software, and have other safeguards in place (such as having a man from the NTMA physically present in the office while the draw is being conducted 🙄 ) I sometimes get this niggling doubt. But who knows......