P2P No Bank

“Can we really create wealth?”
That was a simple thought that popped in my head on the way to work yesterday. The “we” that I had in mind is the all the people in the earth collectively, not individuals. Surely, one individual can create wealth for him or herself. In Silicon Valley alone, [...]

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• Hate Your Job? Learn From It It's not just that I dislike my current job (I do) but I'm so ready and pumped and jazzed to be in an agency working on ads that no matter how much better it was I don't think I would be satisfied. Even if I was making what I deserve......
• Four Money Tips For Soon-To-Be Graduates Today I'll turn in my last two final projects and be done with this semester. I've got about eight weeks off, and then I start the last class of my undergraduate career in late June. I'm pretty excited. I've been looking forward to this time in my life for a......

Continue reading → Wealth Creation: Is it a Myth?

Good morning and welcome to the Dia de Los Muertos edition of Loanio’s roundup. Dia de Los Muertos is a holiday celebration that takes place primarily in Mexico and celebrates the dead. It goes by Day of the Dead in English and correspondingly it matches the Catholic holidays of All Saints Day and All Souls [...]

• Gold Certificates Small Size Notes Paper Money US Coins Paper Money
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• Hunter Ceiling Fans Home Lighting

• Over my dead body (movie) College Girl and I went to see this movie tonight. I wasn't sure if I'd want to see it, after reading the review, but I had seen a preview. There was a lot of laughter in the theater. Everyone seemed to like it. Of course, it is fluff, but hey,......
• The "Find a Need and Fill It" Approach to Small Business This week has been a particularly busy one for me in terms of blog consulting. People may not be ordering extensive new websites, but it seems that more people are trying to spruce up the websites where they sell goods and services, create personal websites to make them more attractive...

Continue reading → Loanio Roundup – Dia de Los Muertos

Lending Club, the P2P lending marketplace which re-opened with SEC approval last October, has seen steady and impressive growth through the first half of 2009. The company has funded $18.2 million in loans since January 2009, and loan growth has averaged nearly 7% month-over-month during that period. According to a blog post in June by [...]

• lending club, my best investment of 2008 I have written about person-to-person (or P2P) lending several times. The big players in the US are Prosper (currently not accepting new lender registrations) and Lending Club.  I invested a bit of money in both of them.  I was checking up on both of my accounts and noticed a......
• BankServ powers innovative Lending Club person-to-person lending and borrowing platform BankServ powers innovative Lending Club person-to-person lending and borrowing platform   SAN FRANCISCO, 7 August, 2007 — BankServ, worldwide experts in electronic payments, today announced its part in the successful launch of Lending Club's collaborative person-to-person (P2P) lending platform. Lending Club has implemented BankServ's Magex Payment Platform, ACH reporting and......

Continue reading → Lending Club Posts Strong 1H 2009, Loans Growing 7% Per Month

Tamara Sanderson is a Kiva Fellow with Xacbank in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

• January Effect and October Effect, Are They Real? Market timing does not work (1). However, there are still plenty of investors who believe in market timing, and a subset of these believe that January Effect and October Effect are real. In a true MythBusters' fashion, I did some historical data analysis and have a few statistical factoids to......
• Buildify Gives Back: Blog Action Day 2008 This year, the focus for the annual Blog Action Day 2008 is on poverty. Bloggers around the world have the opportunity to participate in this effort to raise public awareness of global poverty. EU ministers have agreed to join in, and thousands of bloggers will be taking part in this......

Continue reading → You are in Mongolia… really?

The borrower who receives the 10,000th loan from Zopa UK will be lucky – it will be an interest free loan.
Furthermore Zopa has a referral promotion in July. Zopa pays 100 GBP (approx. 165 US$) to members that refer a borrower who successfully gets a loan in July.

• Pertuity Direct Review - a New Peer to Peer Lending Platform Pertuity Direct is the newest company to make a serious entry into the peer to peer lending market place. However, the Pertuity Direct business model is very different from Lending Club or Prosper, two of the current leaders in P2P lending. The business model used by Lending Club and Prosper ......
• Paying down the mortgage One of my goals is to pay off our mortgage by the year 2011, becoming COMPLETELY debt free. That means that to make my share of the payments, I need to pay down $54,000 over the next four years, while also aggressively funding a variety of savings, investments, and pet......

Continue reading → Interest Free Loan

The State of Washington’s Department of Financial Institutions, Securities Division has issued a Consent Order, sanctioning Prosper Marketplace for violating the Securities Act of Washington.
The Securities Division tentatively found that Respondent Prosper Marketplace offered and sold investments in the form of small loans through its website. Approximately 1,860 Washington State residents invested $6,452,422 in these loans. [...]

• How to Find Financial Stability in Unstable Markets Right now, the only news about the economy seems to be bad news, and it may take a few months if not years to improve. The dollar is weak, oil prices are still up and the cost of living has skyrocketed this year. These are unstable times, but that doesn’t......
• Prosper Debt Sale In Progress As I mentioned several days ago a debt sale is about to be completed. I have had 3 loans sold so far (I will update this page if more are sold)... B Credit @15.16% interest rate, non-homeowner, sold for 9.54% of principal (borrower had not made a single payment). C......

Continue reading → State of Washington Sanctions Prosper

We are delighted to once again offer Kiva lenders the opportunity to support borrowers in Ecuador! After over a year of inactivity, Kiva has recently teamed up with the Fundación ESPOIR to support the great work they do in helping bring financial and…

• Are Person to Person Loans Guaranteed? I recently received a reader question about Peer to Peer Lending, and I would like to share the answer with everyone. Prosper and Lending Club have become very popular. Are Person to Person Loans guaranteed? First, let's address the popularity of P2P lending: Prosper and Lending Club have become popular......
• Your Money and Your Brain Check out this review for a new book by Jason Zweig called Your Money and Your Brain. It has some pretty good tips about how our brains work when it comes to making financial decisions—it's pretty interesting. Jason Zweig is the guy who wrote all the commentary on the newest......

Continue reading → Kiva is back in Ecuador!

Calling all university students, professors and alumni!  Boost school spirit and support for Kiva by checking out our Campus Kiva website, and keep your eyes peeled for a new and improved version set to come out later this summer.  Search for your sc…

• How to Use Twitter in your personal,business and social life ?? I can write on various topics and that was the purpose of starting this blog, but since I started using Twitter , to be precise ,I joined Twitter in April and since then I am following Twitter like anything..Doing lot of research and most of my posts belong to Twitter.......
• Vulture Investing: Buying the Joneses Stuff at Half Price! I had an interesting talk with a family member yesterday regarding her neighbors -- the stereotypical Mr. & Mrs. Jones -- who now find themselves in a personal finance bear trap. They're trying to unload their 2 year old SUV because they can no longer keep up with the payments on three cars.  That's right folks -......

Continue reading → Kiva on your Campus

Financial Leveraging is the borrowing of funds in order to invest and gain returns enough to profit and cover the principal and accrued interest. For a company, the investment is made again its own equity, as borrowed funds would go into expansion of the company. A homeowner would consider the home as the source of [...]

• Leveraged Finance Defined Leveraged finance relates to funding a business, a company or another investment using more debt than would be considered normal. More than normal debt is going to imply by nature that the funding is a riskier prospect, and therefore more costly than normal borrowing in general. As a result, leveraged......
• Alternative Investments, Correlation, and Diversification In this Ask the Expert with Larry Swedroe article, Rob observed that none of the alternative investments provided sufficient risk reduction to soften the impact of the current Bear Market. Diversification doesn't seem to be working. What went wrong? Here's the question from Randy: Dear Larry, I'm reading your book,......

Continue reading → Leveraging Debt

We’ve gone a bit potty this month – all this sun is definitely going to our heads. Not only are we offering any member that refers a friend who joins and successfully gets a loan during July £100, but we’ve also got a fab offer for the lucky borrower who receives our 10,000th loan – [...]

• Why Would a Borrower Join a Group? (Prosper Group Analysis Part 1) Seems to me that there are 2 good reasons for a borrower to join a group: better funding percentage and/or reduced interest rate.  I think that there may be other reason, but they fall into the category of what is your favorite pro team or your favorite color.  That is......
• Education Loan Interest is Not Always Tax Deductible It seems to be a common statement among parents, planners, financial aid people, some bloggers, etc. that Don't worry about education loans, they are tax deductible... Like most tax advice given...it is a half truth. Student Loans Are not Always Tax Deductibe Yes, your interest is tax deductible if you......

Continue reading → Want an interest free loan?

I could feel the beads of sweat rolling down my face.  Sitting in a makeshift police station under a tent, I was surrounded by three Congolese policemen and my accuser, a young man that could not have been past his mid twenties.  My crime: videotaping in public.

As I was returning from a group visit with [...]

• Bob Hope Stamp Many collectors looked forward to the debut of the Bob Hope stamp on May 29, 2009. Not only stamp collectors, but also fans of comedy in general and Bob Hope in particular anticipated the stamp's release. The history of the Bob Hope stamp release and the first day cancellation caricatures......
• Finding birth family (and corruption) (and love) in India Hi all, Several weeks ago Karin posted on my behalf as I'd wanted to post anonymously. My daughter did not want her story shared but she now feels differently. As her birth mother has also said she is happy about me sharing their story I am no longer remaining anonymous.......

Continue reading → My Run-in with the Congolese Police

Each week, we’ll be getting to the bottom of the real meaning of financial terms bandied about when you’re looking for a loan. It’s everything you ever needed to know but were too afraid to ask…and this week, we’re looking at APR.
APR
APR is short for Annual Percentage Rate and was introduced under the Consumer Credit [...]

• Fifth Third Bank "Early Access" Check Advances Fifth Third Bank has been pushing this "service" pretty hard at their branches.  It's basically a pre-authorized payday loan account that you can access through your online account access (for a small 10% advance fee).   I guess they need a replacement for bad home loans.  Their stock price, as of......
• Buying a Fixer Upper with an FHA 203k Loan Most people are familiar with using an FHA loan to buy a home. If your home and income qualify, it can be one of the most competitive financing products out there. However, what if you find a beautiful piece of coal that just needs some polishing to become a diamond?......

Continue reading → Zopa’s Jargon Buster

One of the best ways to build a strong financial foundation in teens is by starting a savings plan early on. Over the past few years, there have been more teens saving money and the results are clear. When you take the time to teach good financial practices to your children, these skills will carry [...]

• Farthing UK Great Britain Europe Coins World Coins Paper Money
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• 95+ Money Saving Tips - From the readers! Last week I invited readers and bloggers alike to share (or blog) your favorite money saving tips.  I also threw in the added bonus that the most creative idea would receive a $25 Amazon.com gift card.  37 of you chimed in and shared more than 60 tips!  I really enjoyed......
• Money Saving Tips - 02/04/2007 Since today is "Superbowl Sunday", I figured some people would be hosting some game parties.  Here are some money saving tips for entertaining and saving money: 1.  Don't rely on pre-packaged foods as they tend to be more expensive.  Put together your own veggie and snack trays.  2.  Check out......

Continue reading → Teens Saving Money

The most recent news from the Boober brand is that Boober Netherlands was shut down earlier this year by Dutch regulators. Can you give us some information about whether Boober.nl has plans to re-open, and how Boober.it is related to Boober.nl?
Boober.it started in November 2007 as a joint-venture between Boober International and Centax (which is [...]

• Why I Have a New Prosper Ad In the right-most column, I've added a new ad from Prosper.com (I really like their ads, they're so pretty). I was contacted by Prosper about running this ad through the end of December. I don't want to run ads for just anybody, but I feel ok putting one up for......
• Lending Club Advanced Search or Investment Credit Filters I started a similar topic at the P2P No Bank Forum on this subject: Lending Club Advanced Search or Investment Credit Filters However I wanted to post here as well...  My money has not yet cleared into Lending Club, so I have been using the site and trying to find......

Continue reading → Interview with Vittorio Levi of Boober Italy

Kiva’s launch in the United States on June 10th generated a huge amount of media attention for Kiva, and an equally-large number of hits for the Kiva Fellows Blog. Kudos goes to John Briggs KF8, currently on his second Kiva placement with KADET in Kenya, for his #1 in Q2 post in response to the [...]

Continue reading → Kiva Fellows’ Blog Quarter 2 in Review

P2p lending site Smava.de for the first time reached more than 1 million Euro (approx. 1.4 million US$) loan volume funded in one month. One factor contributing to this is that Smava is in the top 10 rankings for German Google search results for the keywords kredit (engl. loan) and kredite (engl. loans) since the [...]

• Why Lending Club Has Stopped Taking New Lenders Initially, I wasn't going to write about the change at Lending Club, because I didn't want to speculate. But since I wrote about it a few times, I felt obligated to share my thought on this event to my readers. A Quick Background Lending Club is a peer-to-peer lending network......
• Why Borrowers With Bad Credit Pay A Higher Interest Rates As of yesterday, one of my loans at Lending Club became "31-120 days late" -- this means the borrower is not making his monthly payment and I could end up losing that money. Since I have 20 active loans, this represents a 5% loss if the loan should default. Curious,......

Continue reading → Smava Funds More Than 1M Euro Loans in June

I was cleaning my glasses the other day and like the butter fingers I am, dropped them. A lens popped out. I instantly thought, “Great, I’m going to have buy new glasses now.” (I should note that I’m new to the glass-wearing crowd.) I suddenly thought, “What would happen if these [...]

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• Make Money Online in a Recession? Bank on it! Online Shopping and E-Commerce:  Customers Get Out of Line to Get Online Retail stores are really feeling the squeeze of the current economic conditions.  More and more shoppers are avoiding driving to malls and stores because of the incredibly high gas prices, instead turning to online shopping to order......
• How to Become a Millionaire Step One - Earn Money Last week I wrote a simplified version of how to become a millionaire. The nature of the process is simple: earn money, spend less than you earn, save and invest, and repeat the process. The Million Dollar Question - How much do you need to earn to become a millionaire?......

Continue reading → Save Money on Glasses and Contact Lenses

For many people, the ability to invest is a pie in the sky dream that will never be achieved, due to the fact that they may not believe they have “enough” money to invest. This book promises to allay those fears and help readers get a better view on personal finance, and working with what [...]

• Deals Big Sky Montana Skiing Vacation

• Personal Finance and Debt Reduction carnivals! They're up! Step right up and get your FREE money posts! MyMoneyBlog.com did a great job with this week's Carnival of Debt Reduction. Eight posts this week -- both with people who advise others in debt reduction and those who are reducing debt themselves. I encourage you to check......
• NURU Personal Finance Cards With Financial Literacy month coming to a close, I thought it would be a great time to share with readers a nifty little personal finance education product by Nuru.  These personal finance cards simulate a portable finance book broken down into various categories, such as: Investing Budgeting Loans Insurance Retirement......

Continue reading → Review: The Motley Fool’s You Have More Than You Think By David and Tom Gardener

By Cynthia McMurry, KF8 Ecuador

Time and cost are enormous disincentives for the working poor when it comes to getting medical treatment. Time spent visiting the doctor is time you’re not at work generating income, and money spent on these visits is money that could otherwise be spent on your children’s education or reinvested in your [...]

• More proof of voter fraud, and guess who it favors? Well, we knew this was going to happen, but I didnt know it was going to start a week beforehand. Amazing. When is the media going to stand up and call them on this? From Crooks and Liars: KFDM Beaumont, TX: KFDM continues to get complaints from Jefferson County voters......
• Life Insurance and Medical Information Bureau (MIB) This was a rather interesting week for me.  For the first time ever, I had a life insurance agent cursed at me with an F word.  The story started last summer when I tried to purchase a term life insurance policy from this agent.  He helped my parents stop the......

Continue reading → Micro-Universal Health Care

I was interviewed last week on the subject of peer to peer lending. My comments aren’t quite in context, but this is a nice intro/overview to peer to peer lending in the Sacramento Bee. The points that I shared with the reporter are:1. Lenders will hav…

• Making Extra Money With P2P Lending Peer to Peer lending is quickly becoming one of the hottest new ways to create multiple streams of income. While there is risk involved, there are various methods that can reduce the risks that individual investors face and provide protection against non-payments. If you're looking for an potential way to......
• Where To Find Small Business Loans With the economic crisis in full bloom, it's increasingly difficult for small business owners to find capital needed to keep their business going. Cutting costs can only improve cash flow to an extent; eventually borrowing becomes inevitable without top line improvement. Unfortunately, traditional business lenders are tightening up their lending......

Continue reading → SacBee article about Peer to Peer Lending

and other financial constructs you so far had a wrong perception of:

(via Finance 2.0)

• Best Small Investments When you are looking to generate money through investing in the shortest amount of time, and you do not have a lot of money to begin with, then you are going to want to learn how to take small investments and turn them into big rewards. If you have a......
• Online Finance Magazines [caption id="attachment_350" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="Online Finance Magazines"][/caption] Most people intentionally bypass the bay of finance magazines in the grocer or their local newsstand, believing that there is nothing in those magazines that will help them gain a better understanding of their money, the state of the economy, or anything else......

Continue reading → Structured Investment Vehicle

We stumbled across this post about us on a blog called Cyberpsychology last week. We got a pretty good write up, and particularly love they way they describe the website – ‘bright colours, round bouncy writing – basically a website that you enjoy looking at’. Well we always thought so…

• linklings, finally, again I doubt they have been sorely missed, since link roundups are not always the most exciting parts of a blog's weekly schedule, but I am finally back into the swing of roundups. Roundups are a little tougher than regular posts, simply because they do have to be created "real time"......
• Top 10 Web Hosting Solutions by Web Hosting Geeks. Good web hosting is essential to success in the online marketplace. Whether you are a small business owner or even a part time blogger you need a web presence, and that starts with web hosting. When I was looking for a host for this blog, I was quickly overwhelmed by......

Continue reading → Cyberpsychology

Online banking has become incredibly popular and it is very useful. For those that rely on online banking, there is an accepted risk that goes with exposing your financial information online, but before you jump in, it is a good idea to do a little checking to make sure that your online bank is indeed [...]

• Finding the Right Bank A big portion of how you handle your finances will have a lot to do with the bank that you choose. In most cities, you should have quite a few choices, and with internet banking, it’s never been easier to find a new bank. However, before you open an account,......
• Obama's 401k Plan Is A Double-Edged Sword Now that we know Obama is the next president, we can evaluate his proposal regarding 401k plan more closely.  If you recall from my last article, I didn't like his proposal that would allow people to early withdraw from their retirement funds -- i.e., 401k and IRA -- without penalty......

Continue reading → Is Your Online Bank Safe?

I scream, you scream, we all scream for Doña Cony’s ice cream.

• How to Do a Phone Interview I had my first telephone interview last week and it went well. Actually, it went better than I expected, and I have another one scheduled for this afternoon. Hopefully, the second phone screening will result in me being called in for a live interview. I learned a few things about......
• Read Helpful Tips About virus Trojans can be malware programs that install along with more attractive titles. For example, that great free software program you got from that dodgy website? It may well be the program you wanted. But someone (usually a 3rd party) may well have attached a Trojan to it. The Trojan will......

Continue reading → As the Microfinance Mundo Turns: The Best Nicaraguan Ice Cream

The State of Oregon’s Order to Cease and Desist, assessing civil penalties for the  sale of unregistered securities to Oregon residents can be read here.
According to the document, Oregon residents have financed over 30,000 Prosper loans totaling more than $2.8 million, but Prosper failed to provide lenders with the information typically required of a securities [...]

• Thirteen Ways to Prevent Your Identity from Being Stolen The United States Postal Service recently produced a brochure for consumers to read entitled "Fighting Back Against Identity Theft." The US Postal Service reports that 2% of identity theft cases reported are because of some form of mail fraud, and have come up with 13 ways that anyone can use......
• Making Extra Money With P2P Lending Peer to Peer lending is quickly becoming one of the hottest new ways to create multiple streams of income. While there is risk involved, there are various methods that can reduce the risks that individual investors face and provide protection against non-payments. If you're looking for an potential way to......

Continue reading → The State of Oregon Sanctions Prosper Marketplace

MYC4 will change its fee structure for borrowers for new loans starting in July. One main point of criticism had been that MYC4 by charging origination fees profited from any loan, regardless whether it was paid back or defaulted.
MYC4 has reacted. In future there will be no origination fees and only fees on the interest [...]

• Use Prosper.com to Repair Your Credit This blog is mostly dedicated to Prosper.com lending.  However, I think about all aspects of the process at Prosper.  Lately there have been a number of postings that list repairing credit as an ancillary benefit of borrowing on Prosper.com.  Repairing damaged credit is a critical step in reducing debt since better......
• Fools Born to Buy Debt Allow Wall Street Exports to Boom With the fall of the stock market, the collapse of the economy became clear. The real driving force behind it, however, was the failure and dropping confidence in the largest bond market of the world. Known as structured finance, it has led to a crisis which rivals the Great Depression,......

Continue reading → MYC4 to Change Structure of Borrower’s Fees

The last recession that our country experienced was, in truth, a mild one. The stock market and many corporate profits began to tank, but consumer spending seemed to dance merrily on through the recession without as much as a scratch. Consumer spending has long been the major engine driving the entire United States economy, which [...]

• United States Stamps
• Confederate States United States Stamps

• Vexed by a couple of MSN credit card articles Liz Pulliam Weston's When paying bills can hurt your credit on MSN Money vexed me. (Which is good, because I haven't had a good vexing in a while.) According to the article, if you have old debts and try to repay them, it can hurt your credit score. This is......
• Meet The M-Network: An Interview With Single Guy Money. Over the course of the next 8 Wednesdays, I am posting interviews with the other members of the M-Network so you can get to know them a little bit better. If you don't already read these sites, you really should check them out! To be fair I am going......

Continue reading → Debt and the Credit Crisis

Last Tuesday was the first day of the Kiva Partnership with CCT, and my first day as a Kiva Fellow. The highlight of the day was posting CCT’s first borrower profiles on Kiva.org. Laughter filled the room as CCT workers took turns writing their first profiles. For CCT to move to the “Active” stage as soon as possible, and for entrepreneurs in the Philippines to get much-needed loans quickly, there’s no time to waste.

• Is Person to Person Lending Safe? I received several reader e-mails this weekend regarding the safety of person to person lending. I thought I would share these questions and the answers, so hopefully more people will better understand the process. Regarding Person to Person lending - do you know how they underwrite these loans? Do the......
• The Different Categories of Dog Training [caption id="attachment_241" align="alignleft" width="160" caption="Obedience"][/caption]For many of us, the phrase "dog training" is typically associated with images of dogs jumping through hoops, shaking on command, or responding to bellowed-out German words. But this kind of "dog obedience" only represents part of the world of dog training, and doesn't really present......

Continue reading → CCT’s First Kiva Loan

While this won’t interest my general audience, the Wordpress bloggers among you might want to listen up. The Blog Traffic Exchange is very similar to your related po