Somebody in Bedfordshire got lucky this month....

[finlay666]

So with £30k in an ISA @ 2.7% is about £840 interest/year (if the online calc I used is correct)
Matched betting can be a lot of work & you need huge sums to be able to make huge amounts.

Neither an option for a lot of people.

Ok but you can only pay in £5k say (dependent on age in a cash ISA) in per year

Matched betting isn't a lot of work tbh, I spent maybe an hour a weekend and sometimes a bit during the week doing it, started off with £200 and my float average for betfair was around £500 so throughout a year. With free offers alone (not used returning offers until last week with a £20 no lose bet with betfair which I made £15 off) I made all the profit of ~£600 (not including offers like Stan James casino offers which were also returning a healthy profit of £30+ monthly for a 50p loss on a qualifying bet), there wasn't a huge amount to do time wise, a lot of tools/comparison services are available (one of the people I work closely with at work is friends with the creator of bet72 comparison service) and the community in general on places like MSE is very knowledgeable and helpful

say I invested £1000 (it would have been around that in total with withdrawls/deposits across places) I made £500 or so (still got the spreadsheet for it with all the transactions). 50% interest

[Rob_B]

So why arent you still doing it? There must be a reason you don't & why lots more people don't?

I'd looked at the MSe forum, saw the spreadsheets & decided it was far to complicated. Reports of success on there are mixed, one guy did a running post about his wins/losses & he made £40k-ish (I think) but looking at the totals only a small amount of that was through matched betting?

[scaryjim]

You know, there's an even better way to make money.

GET A JOB!!!

NS&I Premium Bonds are a nice enough way to lock up small amounts of capital for long periods of time. They're an interesting balance between savings, stocks & shares, and out and out gambling. Sure, they're not very exciting, and if you've got larger sums of capital you probably want to invest in something with a more reliable / regular return, but for a few hundred over a long period you've got a reasonable chance for some irregular return. Anyway, currently interest rates - even on the very best ISAs, are still below inflation, so money sitting in a savings account is *currently* losing real value - the best your savings account is doing is limiting the real world loss. May as well spend it at the minute

[Rob_B]

You know, there's an even better way to make money.

GET A JOB!!!

<snip>

Define 'better' ? While I'm at work I can't watch Jeremy Kyle or sit around in my pants playing my PS3 so in that respect working isn't 'better'

I'd make a great lottery millionaire

[finlay666]

So why arent you still doing it? There must be a reason you don't & why lots more people don't?

I'd looked at the MSe forum, saw the spreadsheets & decided it was far to complicated. Reports of success on there are mixed, one guy did a running post about his wins/losses & he made £40k-ish (I think) but looking at the totals only a small amount of that was through matched betting?

Many people don't because they don't understand that you are not gambling but rather securing a guaranteed profit on each outcome? It's also a case of you need a relatively high input before you can get an output as unlike an isa/savings account you can do very little until you have decent liquidity on the betting exchanges

I don't do it any more as I had 'issues' with some of the bookmakers (limited me to 25p per bet which is useless when the minimum lay stake is usually around £2) and I haven't had time recently considering I spent 9 of the last 12 months in hospital or doing my dissertation. I only went through and did the sign up offers, which are one time offers, It was the quickest and easiest way to do it with a fast payout (assuming I bust out at the bookie and win on betfair which was usually the case).

I reached my goal of making enough to pay for a holiday away and did that, considering I'm paying off debts from my final year at uni I will start it up again once I am fully in the black, it's not like I'm getting a shortage of returning customer offers, I usually miss the deadline for them with not having much time off work atm.

During the 6 month period I did it most weekends (and actually recorded it on the spreadsheet I still have) from June 09 to Dec 09 I had £383.77 of profit mostly from free offers, most of the time it was roughly 75% profit from SNR free bets, 95% from stake returned free bets and 20-30p loss per qualifying bet, so for a £100 investment (£20 for the initial bet and £80 for liquidity on betfair) I would get approx £114-118 out of it after commission was calculated. That is approx a 15% return after 2 days. If I did it on a serious basis I would invest more in liquidity to take advantage of the high odd arbs that are available. But I didnt, I did it for a quick profit

[Hicks12]

christ thats lucky .

I am tempted to do this instead of spending £3 a week on lottery... I have £500 to invest (pocket money to most but well to me it aint!), so after looking over this site im still a bit torn between what i do. I get like 0.5% or 1% from my student account so thats a bit useless which makes it seem a bit better deal (ill haave money from student finance sitting there when they give me some lol).

So am i right in saying this:

These premium bomds are 100% safe, i.e after x amount of time I can withdraw and take them with me, no chance of it going down the drain?

Is there a minimum/maximum time they can be in there? E.g. i want to take it out after a year as interest rates have shot up enough to put it back to savings?

Couldnt see it on the site but will look again, since i assume some of you have had bonds in the past I thought id ask .

[kalniel]

It's all at the website

Yes, 100% safe, unless the national treasury goes bankrupt. You can withdraw your investment at any time.

Minimum £100. Max £30,000

http://www.nsandi.com/products/pb

I'd go for an ISA first - I know you don't technically need it as a student, but you can only invest so much in each year, so starting now pays dividends later on when you are a tax payer. And yes, NSANDI do a 100% safe ISA too, which at the moment isn't a bad rate relatively.

[Hicks12]

yeah i found that after i posted , apparently going for the bonds isnt a good idea as payout is very low and its like 1 in 11 billion chance of winning according to MSE instead its best to just go with the savings accounts.

Not sure whether to do that or not tbh, its a good idea but the only income i have is £45 p/w from work and then 3.5k from Student finance. My plan was to just shove the money in a savings account to get the interest of 3% which will counter the new 1.5% interest i pay (and a bit of profit haha!).

But maybe thats a good idea as then I can build up the isa over time. Im on this course for 5 years though so got ages to decide, think what ill do is just dump the money into the best interest paying account and then near the end (year or 2) pump it into an isa or just pay it back .

[badass]

During the 6 month period I did it most weekends (and actually recorded it on the spreadsheet I still have) from June 09 to Dec 09 I had £383.77 of profit mostly from free offers, most of the time it was roughly 75% profit from SNR free bets, 95% from stake returned free bets and 20-30p loss per qualifying bet, so for a £100 investment (£20 for the initial bet and £80 for liquidity on betfair) I would get approx £114-118 out of it after commission was calculated. That is approx a 15% return after 2 days. If I did it on a serious basis I would invest more in liquidity to take advantage of the high odd arbs that are available. But I didnt, I did it for a quick profit

You make one huge mistake comparing your matched betting with cash in premium bonds/savings accounts/shares.
You put a zero value on your time. Unless you don't value your time at all.

[jim]

Matched betting, I got £500 in about a year without trying, know people that now make ~40k on a good weekend

Yeah, I saw some of your posts re: MBing over at MSE. Whilst it's a decent way of making money, I wouldn't put it forward as an alternative to Premium Bonds.

For starters, even the world's biggest idiot would struggle to make a loss on Premium Bonds!

[finlay666]

You make one huge mistake comparing your matched betting with cash in premium bonds/savings accounts/shares.
You put a zero value on your time. Unless you don't value your time at all.

Say £10 per hour, that is still £7 per hour say profit on a £20 free bet, and the actual time involved is practicly negligible given the sites that find the best odds for you and the tools that perform all the calculations re. the lay stakes make it fast and easy

It was usually spent waiting for a download to finish or a show to start on TV so it's not like the time could be profitibly used in other ways easily

[matty-hodgson]

Do all the matched betting stuff, THEN put it in an ISA, win win .

[finlay666]

Do all the matched betting stuff, THEN put it in an ISA, win win .

Make money fast then make it slow... when you can continue to make it fast (and it's untaxable and there is no limit)

No point in putting it in an ISA unless you can't be involved in it tbh

[Saracen]

If only one person got lucky in Bedfordshire this month, I'm glad I don't live there.

Still, it would help explain the declining population figures.

[finlay666]

Still, it would help explain the declining population figures.

That one is easy, ugly people

[kalniel]

That one is easy, ugly people

There are ugly people all over the country.

It's the price of beer that varies.