July 31st, 2007 — Prosper, homeowner, lending strategy, real estate from Matt @ Prosper Lending Review
With all the recent troubles in the housing market, some lenders are starting to ask whether homeowners are a higher risk than non-homeowners when lending on Prosper. In the housing market the biggest problem homeowners are facing is when ARM or adjus…
Related StoresContinue reading → Are non-homeowners a safer lending risk in a declining house market?
July 31st, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, banking, branch, deposit, fees, largest, manager, managers, overdrawn from Andre Nosalsky @ Lending Club
Everybody has a relationship with a bank, but few people take time to understand how their bank works. Here are four things you should know about banking in the USA.
Know the cut-off time for each location – Each banking location, including ATMs where you can deposit money, have cut-off times after which [...]
July 31st, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, bracket, deduction, deductions, largest, mortgage, reduced, taxable, taxes from Mike Smith @ Lending Club
For most Americans who have a mortgage, interest paid on their mortgage will likely be one of their largest tax deductions. Misunderstanding this deduction is common and often leads to poor decisions.
The mortgage interest deduction will reduce your taxable income. This means that the taxes you pay will be based on a smaller amount. It [...]
Continue reading → Backwards Thinking on Mortgage Interest Deductions
July 31st, 2007 — Prosper, Zopa, asset class, peer to peer lending, risk management from tom @ Prosper Lending Review
I just came across an article written yesterday, Nervous Equity Investors Should Consider Zopa Lending, which argues that the time to invest in P2P lending is now based on market conditions. Personally, I’m not sure the P2P lending market is something …
Related StoresJuly 31st, 2007 — Investing from Lazy Man @ Lazy Man and Money
I love mutual funds. You love mutual funds. They are great all around investment tools and I highly recommend them - especially those low-fee Vanguard funds. However, I’m thinking mutual funds aren’t quite as sexy as they used to be. Yes, my money is slowly drifting to some newer, sultry investments and accounts.
I’ve mentioned [...]
Continue reading → Zecco and Prosper: Two Great New Ways to Invest
July 31st, 2007 — P2P Lending from Matt Flannery @ Kiva Chronicles
Life is busy as ever. The primary task — building an organization to last. Some news:
– We’ve added some amazing people to the team. In the last month we’ve added an illustrious engineer Jon Kart, a VP of microfinance Isabelle Barres from the MixMarket, a microfinance expert John Berry and a Finance Director Jen Hamilton. Hiring in a period of growth is a significant time commitment, but the commitment pays off many-fold when you hire the right people. These new friends are going to start paying huge dividends soon for Kiva.
– Our focus these days is managing the mounting risk on our site as we start sending larger and large sums to the microfinance field partners in our network. Our solution is to be transparent to lenders about the risks of lending on our platform. To that end, we’ve created a risk rating system to be displayed to our user base which will go live later this week. This is one of the most significant accomplishments in our short history and is the culmination of nearly 6 months of work.
– We are making a significant move to do more work in the field. Finally, we are at a point where we can afford this it makes incredible sense. We’ve sent over 40 Kiva fellows to the field, are conducting audits all around the world, and are signing up new MFIs by actually visiting them and training them. In our first year we had very few partners in South and Central America. We are just rectifying that by signing up high quality partners there, for instance Pro Mujer Bolivia and FINCA Peru.
– I’ve been trailed by a Japanese film crew for the last week. NHK Japan is doing a series on social entrepreneurship and I’ve learned a lot about the evolving attitudes towards social issues in Japan thanks to a week hanging out with the crew. It’s been a learning experience and so much fun to spend time with the crew. Hopefully, we will be able to handle the outpouring of Japanese interest later this year when the show goes live!
– Kiva continues to face chronic shortages in businesses to fund as we try to accomodate the growing lender interest while managing risk on our platform. We’ve limited user transactions to $25 per user for the rest of the month to deal with the shortage. We live in crazy times!
– I’m off to Aspen Colorado tomorrow to spend the rest of the week at the Brookings Institute conference on Poverty. I’m excited about the event but it will be hard to be away from home.
– Jess and I just completed a move back to the Mission District/Noe Valley area where Kiva began. Her graduation from the Stanford GSB prompted the move and it is incredible to realize the dream of walking to work.
– Jess just took off for a trip to West Africa to visit MFI partners there and she is working again for Kiva dealing with some of our relationships with MFIs in the field. It is amazing to be working together but hard to be apart.
– We moved to a new office to accomodate the growth. Our team is in the process of moving from 10 to 20 people and needed a better space to handle the new activity. The new place is intimidatingly professional.
– Kiva will be on the Today show this week or next. This is another humbling episode in a series of media events about Kiva and social entrepreneurship.
More to come.
Related StoresJuly 31st, 2007 — Lending Club, Referral, affiliate from tom @ Prosper Lending Review
Almost three weeks ago Lending Club quietly launched a referral program inside of Facebook. When logged into your account, there is “invite friends” text and a small cash graphic in the upper right corner on most pages. Clicking on this link sends …
Related StoresJuly 31st, 2007 — Zopa from tom @ Prosper Lending Review
The Guardian Unlimited announced the top 10 UK startups and Zopa, UK’s peer to peer lending site, is number 9 on the list. According to the Guardian, “Driven by the surge of Web 2.0 sites and the widespread penetration of broadband, Britain’s dot econo…
Related StoresJuly 30th, 2007 — Groups and Group Leaders from zcommodore @ Posts from all blogs
Earlier today, I caught some heat from other members of Prosper about my group and the fact that 4 of the 9 loans are late and 4 of 7 are late that have had payments due. Now, this evening, I get this message from Prosper.
Group Building 101: Effective Group LeadershipLearn the ins and outs of effective group leadership. The next class is
tomorrow, Tuesday, July 31 at 4 pm Pacfic time. Enroll now.The seminar includes:Creating your group identitySetting your group’s membership criteriaGroup rewardsRegistration for this seminar is free but space is limited.
Please select the session that works best for you and register today!
How to build a 5-star group on Prosper
I guess maybe I should enroll and see what I’ve been doing wrong.
Related StoresJuly 30th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, appliances, bulbs, cold, efficient, electronics, energy, program, star from Mike Smith @ Lending Club
There seem to be some monthly expenses that are unavoidable because they are related to basic household needs. As a result, these expenses often get overlooked when people try to cut back on their spending. However, it is possible to reduce these types of expenditures, as you’ll see in the following examples on energy conservation.
There [...]
July 30th, 2007 — Update from Jeff & Heather @ The FANAFI Foundation
Recently I closed DesertTrikkes.com as sales as died thanks to administrative changes from up top with discounts, etc. I wanted to update the lenders who were involved in this loan that it is going to be repaid back as originally planned in the Fall of this year. Even though the money coming in from it [...]
Related StoresJuly 30th, 2007 — Germany, Marketing, Smava from wiseclerk @ P2P-Banking.com
Last week at the end of my post on the Prosper referral program I suggested:
The next step for even more growth
Currently all referral programs mentioned above have one thing in common. They are open only to existing members of the p2p lending services. Assuming they are successful and the p2p lending serves are seeking opportunities to enable [...]
July 30th, 2007 — Announcements, CEO announcements, Lending Club, News, anticipated, funding, half, impressed, million, passed, preparing, rapid from Renaud Laplanche @ Lending Club
On Thursday July 26, the Facebook community passed the mark of half a million dollars lent and borrowed! This milestone was passed 7 weeks after we announced the first loan on June 6, which is certainly faster than we anticipated.
We continue to be impressed with the rapid adoption. The Facebook F8 launch has helped spread [...]
July 30th, 2007 — Prosper.com, Statistics, Strategy from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder
I had a very interesting email exchange with RGF. (I emailed him after using his forum posts in articles last week).
Here is a portion of that email exchange on default rates over time and their affect on yield.
RGF:
Default rate: It’s not just if a loan defaults, but when.
A lot of people, especially early in this [...]
Continue reading → Default Rate: It’s Not Just If a Loan Defaults, But When
July 30th, 2007 — Psychology from Lazy Man @ Lazy Man and Money
I’ve got some personal finance blasphemy to get off my chest. It will probably even ruffle the feathers of more than a few personal finance writers. I’ll take that risk, because I hate to see money wasted. People are wasting money every day and not realizing it. They aren’t even [...]
Related StoresJuly 30th, 2007 — Prosper, mortgage, real estate, unsecure loan from tom @ Prosper Lending Review
Today there is all sorts of interesting news about unusual uses of peer to peer lending. The Wall Street Journal published an article about using P2P lending to fund a startup. I just came across an article on Mortgage 101 about using Prosper to fund…
Related StoresJuly 30th, 2007 — identity theft angry, language dialect "Standard American", stress reduction, writing from Dr-J @ Read about it
July 30th, 2007 — Prosper, funding universe, go big, prosper news, raise capital, startup, venture capital from tom @ Prosper Lending Review
Most agree that web has significantly reduced the cost to start a new business. Paul Graham has written a great series of essays on how to start a startup with great information on funding. In his essay How to Fund a Startup he said that he started his…
Related StoresJuly 30th, 2007 — News & Updates from LendingStats @ LendingStats
We appreciate feedback from our visitors. It lets us know where we have to improve and helps shape the direction of the site.
One of the things we noticed when reading through our email feedback was the amount of useful information submitted by our visitors. Many of your questions, concerns, and comments were broadly applicable to [...]
July 29th, 2007 — Lenders and lending from zcommodore @ Posts from all blogs
I was just scanning through my past blog posts and I see I haven’t mentioned my 29% loans yet. I’ve commented about them in various forums now and then so I guess I’ll post about them here now.When I first found Prosper, I saw rates in the teens and thought, “wow, that would be great!” Later, after money transferred into my account, I had found 29% AF loans and went nuts. Eventually, of my first 6 originated loans, 5 of them were 29% AF loans as far as borrower rates go. One had a 0.5% group leader fee.Later, I scaled down on those high risk loans but then from April to June, I added 6 more 29% borrower rate loans. In total, of my 24 $50 loans, half of them were at the Prosper maximum for borrowers of 29%.So, how am I doing? Of those 12, 3 are in some stage of late. One is 4+ months late after making 3 payments. One is 2 months late and never made one payment. One is 1 month late after making 9 straight on-time payments. Of the ones that are current, 3 have made one payment (one of those is pending but will be credited to my account early tomorrow morning.) 2 of the current loans have been late at least once and caught up. All but one of the 29% loans were autofund loans. The credit grades range from C to HR. One of the C loans has made a couple of extra payments as well.Why have I bid on these? I did some math once and figured that for one loan at 29%, if they make their payments on time over the life of the loan and don’t pay off early, I will earn ~$25 for each $50 bid. In other words, if I have 3 29% loans and one never makes a payment but the other two pay out over 3 years, I break even. Anything after that is gravy.Is it possible to find 2 good 29% loans for each one that goes bad? I don’t know if that is true or not. So far, I have 3 good ones for each bad one but that only assumes the good ones don’t pay off early and don’t go bad as well. I’m probably going to scale back for awhile on 29% AF loans due to more loans coming up in my group and the fact that the end results don’t appear to add up to what I had hoped they would. It has been a fun experiment though.As far as my loans that aren’t at a 29% borrower rate, the results aren’t even as good with those. Of the 12 loans at lower rates, one is 4+ months late, 2 are “Late”, 1 is <15 late, and 2 haven’t had payments due. Those loans aren’t paying enough interest to make up for bad loans as fast as the 29% loans do. Ultimately, I’d be way behind here with Prosper if I weren’t getting some group leader fees and referral rewards. Somehow, I think that is the case with a lot of people on Prosper who have been around awhile.
Related StoresJuly 29th, 2007 — SEO from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder
Fantasy link exchange is when you name (with links) the 35 blogs with which you would like to exchange blogroll links. In an ideal world they find out about your desire from Technorati or PFBlogs.org or sheer luck and consummate the exchange.
The Simple Dollar
I Will Teach You To Be Rich
Get Rich Slowly
Blueprint for Financial Prosperity
My Money [...]
July 29th, 2007 — P2P Lending from Dr-J @ Read about it
People need to learn sustainability. Whether financial or natural, sustainability is important.
Related StoresJuly 29th, 2007 — sustainability from Dr-J @ Read about it
http://www.city-data.com/picfilesc/picc31426.phpThis photo reminds us of how precious water is.
Related StoresJuly 29th, 2007 — General from bamalucky @ Posts from all blogs
I can’t think of anything to talk about anymore.Prosper is evolving so fast in real time,i can’t keep up.I can’t think of 3 people from 2006 that are still jaded with prosper.
Related StoresJuly 28th, 2007 — PF Review from Lazy Man @ Lazy Man and Money
There’s a great billboard along the 101 in the San Francisco that I pass on my morning commute. It’s for the 49ers and it simply reads, “Life is good, but football is better.” I couldn’t agree more. Onto my reads of the week.
Ben at Money Smart Life asks if Minimum Wage is [...]
Continue reading → Personal Finance Review - Football is Better edition
July 28th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, Series, brother, budget, cool, empty, entertainment, envelope, follow, goals from Maneesh Sethi @ Lending Club
For someone my age, I’m really lucky – I have a lot of extra cash because of the jobs that I’ve had. However, one thing that I haven’t been using is a budget. With no budget, it’s really easy to go out and spend money…but what do you say when the credit card bill comes [...]
Related StoresJuly 28th, 2007 — SEO, Site Statistics from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder
I would like to say thanks to the blogs that in the last 30 days were the top 10 referrers to RateLadder that are blogs.
Prosper Lending
P2P No Bank
Lazy Man and Money
Clever Dude
Hustler Money Blog
Prosper Lenders
Psychohistory
Prosperlicious
Blueprint for Financial Prosperity
Prosperous Land
July 27th, 2007 — Physics, achievement gap, math fears math phobia, scientific literacy from Dr-J @ Read about it
July 27th, 2007 — Prosper, Zopa from wiseclerk @ P2P-Banking.com
If you invest at Prosper.com lenders should not need your money for the next 3 years. Because at the moment all loans have 36 month terms. And - apart from the chance that the borrower might select to pay back the loan early - lenders can not withdraw money still loaned early (this does not apply [...]
Related StoresJuly 27th, 2007 — "prisma microfinanzas", FINCA, microfinance, microfinancing, peru, poverty, terrorism from Ramon @ Ramon's Kiva Blog
Finally, Perú is on Kiva. There are now two MFIs active, that Kiva has had discussions with for a while: Finca Perú and Prisma Microfinanzas. They are active in the Ayacucho and greater Puno/Juliaca regions, respectively. All very exciting.Let me add…
July 27th, 2007 — P2P Lending from randyfay @ Kiva Blogs from the Field
Clara Ajsoc
We’ve met a wide variety of women in the last couple of weeks, from Mayan women who speak no Spanish at all and who try to scrape together a living with some weaving and a pig, to fairly ordinary poor urban women who remind us a little more of home, except that to [...]
July 27th, 2007 — Prosper.com from prosperousPFstrategies @ Prosperous PF Strategies
July 27th, 2007 — 2006, Financial Education, Lending Club, Research, jumpstart, literacy, predictors, researchers, solution, students from Andre Nosalsky @ Lending Club
Recently with so much discussion going on about college debt, I wanted to see if there was any scientific research on factors that might affect the amount of debt a person is carrying. I came across a study published in 2006 that sheds some light on this matter. This study was published in the [...]
Related StoresContinue reading → How Your Attitude and Financial Literacy Affect Your Debt Level
July 27th, 2007 — P2P Lending from Mike @ Prosperous Land
I stumbled onto RGF via RateLadder’s two posts on him. RGF is a Prosper lender who identifies himself as an underwriting manager at a bank with 15 years experience in collections. I’m putting all his posts on my required reading list as he’s got all go…
Related StoresJuly 27th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, instrument, larger, main, manner, points, purchases, readers, write from Mike Smith @ Lending Club
Regular readers of the Lending Club blog know how often the problems with credit cards are discussed here. Credit Card debt, interest and fees, and similar topics have been covered extensively by me, as well as other contributors to this blog. You will probably be surprised to learn then that I use my own [...]
Related StoresJuly 27th, 2007 — Prosper.com, Strategy from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder
Here is Prosper’s Lending Tips Tutorial.
What do you think? Where could they make improvements? Where did they get it just right?
Related StoresJuly 27th, 2007 — Sundry Comments from Lazy Man @ Lazy Man and Money
When I was growing up I read Dan Shaughnessy, a famous Boston Globe sports writer, whenever I could. Since I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that I often disagree with what his writings. However, I remember he would occasionally put together some sundry sports thoughts under the headline of “Clearing out the desk [...]
Related StoresJuly 27th, 2007 — General from tom @ Zopa
Recently I’ve got really into cheese, with the aim of one day setting up my own cheese and wine lounge.
Progress has been quite steady, and has involved plenty of trips to the excellent Neal’s Yard Dairy, a holiday down to Cornwall in search of the mighty Yarg, working my way through some obscure books on [...]
July 27th, 2007 — General from Vadim @ Zopa
Juliet pointed out that
Radar is a palindrome as it is identical forwards and backwards. Rat is an anagram of tar not a palindrome. Other examples are, madam, ABBA, repaper and mom. Just been reading the blog and can see that the sentences you put on are palindromes but the individual words are [...]
July 27th, 2007 — credit card, identity theft from tom @ Prosper Lending Review
So this post isn’t exactly about P2P lending, but it is finance-related and funny so I thought I’d share. NYC resident Frank Van Buren was flooded in plastic when he received 2,000 credit cards in the mail. He has had an Citibank ExxonMobil account f…
Related StoresJuly 26th, 2007 — Update from Jeff & Heather @ The FANAFI Foundation
Heather and I are pulling some money out of Prosper. This is a temporary situation however, so we will be back to lend again in a few months. Outside of the ‘need’ for the funds for other things (mainly a medical bill that wasn’t anticipated), there is a sense of anxiety with credit and debt [...]
Related StoresJuly 26th, 2007 — Lenders and lending from zcommodore @ Posts from all blogs
That was fast. I bid on this loan request as a friend (long story) right after it went live. It closed less than an hour ago and it became a loan within minutes. That was the shortest time I’ve ever had a listing that I bid on become a loan.I asked the borrower what kind of verification they did and she told me she got the postcard for address verification in only 2 days all the way from California to Maryland. I guess the Post Office was helping things along a bit as well.
Related StoresJuly 26th, 2007 — Funny, Lending Club, discount, discounts, disneyland, happen, laughing, student, what’s from Maneesh Sethi @ Lending Club
A few days ago, I was talking to my brothers and sisters, when one of them mentioned a trip to Disneyland that my family had taken when I was only a couple years old. They all started cracking up—something very funny had happened. You know that feeling you get when everyone is laughing at an [...]
Related StoresJuly 26th, 2007 — Prosper, prosper competitor from tom @ Prosper Lending Review
Earlier this month we reported that someone was advertising on various websites in an attempt to find a programmer to build a competitor to Prosper. The first advertisement was in late June on Rent a Coder. The winning bid was Hiren Kotadiya from Ind…
Related StoresContinue reading → Third mystery Prosper competitor project emerges
July 26th, 2007 — Lending Club, bank’s, discussing, license, lobby, wait from Mike Smith @ Lending Club
Not too long ago, it was a weekly ritual to wait in line at the bank for 40 minutes on a Friday afternoon to cash my paycheck. Nowadays, I tend to limit my trips to the bank to making deposits at the ATM in the lobby. For one reason or another, I made a mistake [...]
Related StoresJuly 26th, 2007 — Contests from Lazy Man @ Lazy Man and Money
Here’s a reminder that the contest that I started a month ago ends tonight. There’s a $200 value grand prize at stake. As of this writing there are around 50 people who have entered. I believe only one person has taken the option to review my site for the extra entries. [...]
Related StoresContinue reading → Lazy Man Contest Ends Tonight at Midnight (PST)
July 26th, 2007 — Kenya, Kerry Brandon, P2P Lending from Kerry @ Kiva Blogs from the Field
Jambo once again from cold Nairobi! I am going to start this blog talking about my trip to Kayole to visit some Kiva clients last Wednesday. Kayole is located about 30 minutes from downtown Nairobi, and is not really considered a slum, more of an ‘informal settlement’ whatever that really means. So we loaded up [...]
Related StoresJuly 26th, 2007 — college from Lazy Man @ Lazy Man and Money
I mentioned yesterday that I’m looking to give my newborn nephew a head start in his education savings. Having gone through a number of options, I decided that a 529 Plan was my best option. Unfortunately, a lot of research may be necessary to decide on the right state’s 529 Plan for you. [...]
Related StoresJuly 26th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com, Statistics from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder
As loans become seriously delinquent on Prosper (4+ months late) they are sold to debt buyers. These debt buyers pay pennies on the dollar and then attempt to collect on the debt.
I have often wondered exactly what pennies on the dollar meant. I gathered anecdotal evidence from some of my larger lender friends. The number [...]
July 25th, 2007 — Prosper, lending strategy from Matt @ Prosper Lending Review
Frequently you will see listings on Prosper where someone is taking out a loan for the purpose of reinvesting the money back into Prosper at a higher interest rate. The idea is that you borrow money at a low interest rate and then reinvest it at a high…
Related StoresContinue reading → Borrowing money to lend on Prosper: Wise or Foolish?
July 25th, 2007 — finance, international lending, investment, microfinance, microlending from John Schoolman @ globefunderventures
GlobeFunder has contracted with our first major international partner who will be responsible for our on-the-ground fulfillment, execution of the transaction platform, helping to bring additional partners to GlobeFunder, and aiding with our final selection of our international loan servicing…
Related StoresContinue reading → GlobeFunder contracts with first international partner
July 25th, 2007 — Prosper.com, fibonacci from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder
I have posted twice in the last week about ways one could use Fibonacci when lending on Prosper: Prosper Diversification using Fibonacci to diversify by credit grades and Start Investing P2P Lending using Fibonacci to guide how quickly you move you money onto Prosper.
To be clear I am not suggesting that using Fibonacci in these circumstance [...]
July 25th, 2007 — Lending Club, Spending, addiction, consumer, economy, housing, markets, swiping, tapped from DebtKid @ Lending Club
Good or bad, in America we love easy credit. And nothing is easier than swiping that handy piece of plastic for everything under the sun.
The latest consumer borrowing numbers for May came in well over industry expectations, due largely to a sharp increase in consumer credit card use.
What’s going on?
For the past few years, [...]
Continue reading → Credit Cards Lead Consumer Borrowing Surge
July 25th, 2007 — General from zcommodore @ Posts from all blogs
Am I the only one who wants to blog here anymore on Prospers.org? JW quit blogging a long time ago. Caladia posted a couple of times and left. Bama was doing OK for awhile but then he got bored I guess. He obviously hasn’t run out of negative things to say about Prosper given his recent posts in the forums. I haven’t seen Prince of Egypt or Bev around for awhile either. Fred93 seems to post only when he has a major, well-researched gripe with Prosper.I started this blog since I liked to check the “Blog All” page and read everyone’s blogs all at once and since it was getting fewer and fewer posts, I decided to post some of my own. Lately I’ve been busy so I haven’t had as much to say. Still I figured there would be someone posting besides myself on one of these blogs.Oh well. I guess I’ll keep blogging away until someone else more chatty than myself decides to jump in.
Related StoresJuly 25th, 2007 — Globefunder, US from wiseclerk @ P2P-Banking.com
As reported by Venturebeat and Microcapital.org Globefunder raised 1.5 Mio. US$ in venture capital (seed financing). P2P-banking recently did an interview with Globefunder CEO Brian Mullally. Globefunder is hiring - see a full page ad for positions in Microfinance Insights (found via iPienso).
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