Premium Bonds are our go-to recommendations for your reserve. As you may have heard many-a-time, they’re safe, you won’t lose your original investment – I can prove that as I still have £1 from the year they were launched. No, they don’t offer an guaranteed return, there’s a prize draw, and bond can win anything from £25 to £1m with others in between. If you only have £1 (minimum buy is £100 these days), it could take 50 years to win – as it did for me. But I can reliably affirm that if you have anything near the max of £50k, you will get a steady flow of prizes which in my now very-long experience equates pretty well to what you’d get from a reasonable bank or building society account. And you never know, a couple do win the big one each month. Importantly, too, the returns are tax-free, and you can get your money out within a couple of days. Ad over – but what’s not to like, I’d say.
Should Financial Education be as important as Sex Education?
We’ve talked before about the ‘Hotel des Parents’, where many are having stay well into their thirties, until incomes finally catch up with house prices and they can step onto the ladder and become first-time buyers.
