Entries from December 2007 ↓

Prosper Blogger Explosion

As I had previously observed, the shutdown of the old forums has pushed some of the more vocal Prosper members (and some ex-members either by choice or by force) into alternate forums of communication. The upside of this is a new wave of Prosper relate…

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P2P Lending Predictions for 2008

As we get ready to bring in the new year in a couple of hours here are what a few people around the world have to say about P2P lending today…Ten things that will change your future from the Sydney Morning Herald”PEER-TO-PEER LENDING Whether you’re d…

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The Money Marathon – Win

According to researchers in psychology, when a person does something that is not pleasant but receives some positive reinforcement afterwards, he will keep doing the task and go through the negative to experience the positive. This phenomenon can be seen in many areas of life. In running, it’s usually the natural high feeling from endorphins [...]

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Why I Would Not Impress CNBC’s Erin Burnett

For a variety of non-financial reasons, I like to read Men’s Health from cover to cover each month. Though it has a ton of advertising and is one of the few magazines where it’s impossible to get cheap, the content is usually well worth the cost. I’ve even found the articles about money [...]

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2007 RateLadder Goal Review — Overall A-

As my final planned post of 2007 I will be reviewing my goals and giving a grade.
Here were my 2007 RateLadder Goals.

Expectation
Goal
Stretch Goal
Actual

2007 Year Ending Account Value
$4,386.37
$5,062.84
$5,740.86
$11,519.59

Return on Investment (ROI)
10%
12%
14%
10.16%

New Reinvestment Loans
24
27
30
30+

Number of Defaults
2
0
 
 4

Per Month New Money Added
$50
$100
$150
$582

New Money Source
100% Savings
75% Savings, 25% RateLadder.com
50% Savings, 50% RateLadder.com
50%+ RateLadder.com

Google PageRank
1
3
5
3

Average Unique Visitors Per Day
10
50
100
87.22

 
2007 Year Ending [...]

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Zopa Italy

As many readers will know, Zopa Uk is a thriving p2p lending marketplace that’s pioneering social lending in the UK. Zopa Italy (a franchisee of Zopa Uk) opened on November 14th, 2007. Today marks the midpoint of a generous campaign that Zopa Italy …

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Financial Intervention

Just as your friends and family can have a significant influence on your financial life, so too can you influence the financial habits of those around you. If someone in your life is heading towards a financial crisis, then the time may have come for a financial intervention.
Interventions are necessary in many cases where addictions [...]

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Prosper Lending: Interest Rate & Bidding Guidance

Prosper has recently done something *wonderful* for current and future Prosper Lenders. But I bet you don’t know what it is - or, if you do, why it’s so unbelievably important.
Since it’s garnered very little attention in the P2P Lending Community thus far, I wanted to shine a little bit of light on it [...]

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Shenandoah on Community

The Prosper Community is a dynamic group of borrowers, lenders, and group leaders, all brought together for the common purpose of exchanging money.  Over the past year and a half that I have been a part of it I have seen friendships form, enemies get created, and romances take place.  Prosper touches a spot in [...]

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Twelve Posts of Review - May 2007

[In this series, I’m reviewing some of my better posts of 2007. If you started reading this blog in the middle of the year, this is a good time to catch up.]
To begin the month of May, I compared Compound Interest and the NFL. I brought up how the Patriots traded the #28 [...]

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Notes on Prosper Lending: Interest Rate & Bidding Guidance

Prosper has recently done something *wonderful* for current and future Prosper Lenders. But I bet you don’t know what it is - or, if you do, why it’s so unbelievably important.Since it’s garnered very little attention in the P2P Lending Community thus…

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Prosper Approaching Nuclear War

Lawsuits are like nuclear weapons, it’s the option of last resort and pretty much assures either destruction of MASSIVE damage to all sides involved. When lawsuits fly the only winners will be the lawyers. (”Churla”, Slashdot member).

Even though I’ve…

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Prosper Collections Update

Prosper.com hired Doug Fuller to lead “operations” some time around mid September.  He’s been there 90 days, so we’re gonna take a look at how one of Prosper’s biggest problems - collections - is doing under Doug’s rule.  Summary: Improving, but sl…

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Weekend Personal Finance Links

I’m living in a world of wonder where the Patriots are 16-0. The Lisa Olsen incident seems so far away. Last night, a person introduced himself to me (I was wearing my Patriots shirt) as Adam Vinatieri’s cousin. More than 12 hours later, I still don’t know how I was supposed to [...]

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First loans default at Smava

As P2P-Kredite.com reports the first 2 loans at German p2p lending service Smava.de have defaulted. Since the Start in March 2007 a loan volume of 1 million Euro (approx. 1.4 million US$) has been funded at Smava. The amounts of the two defaulted loans are 4,000 and 6,000 Euro resulting in a default rate of about 1%. [...]

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P2P Lending Review: Best of 2007

The p2p lending market has changed significantly in 2007. One year ago the only p2p lending story was Prosper. Time named Prosper the top website of 2006. BusinessWeek predicted that Prosper would be one of the Top Eight Tech Companies to Watch in 2007…

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Where art thou Kiva?

This evening I found us locked out of our MicroPlace.com account due to a stuck keyboard key when attempting to log in. So the message prompted me to call MicroPlace… No one is in their office until Monday (maybe) which means I won’t be able to lend again until at least Monday.
Sooo… Where does that [...]

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Money-Free Day

An interesting idea that I’ve been hearing about lately is that of the money-free day. Incorporating one into your year, month, week, or even more often may help you achieve your savings goals.
The idea behind a money-free day is to go a whole day without spending any money. The concept is simple, but the implementation [...]

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Zopa Italy promises to lend at Kiva

In an email newsletter Zopa Italy encouraged its member to spread the word about Zopa to friends and relatives. Zopa says it is for 'a good reason': Zopa Italy pledges to lend $1 on Kiva for each new member that registers at Zopa Italy before January 15th.Everybody can monitor how much Zopa invested on this lender page [...]

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Did My Late Prosper.com Loans Pay Over Christmas?

I received two Christmas gifts on Prosper.com this week.

This first gift was unexpected. Going into the Christmas holiday week, I had 8 less than 15 day late loans and 1 “late” loan. As of Christmas Eve (Monday), all but one showed daggers.

Late loans for me seem to come in bunches. The last bunch did not treat me well, as shown by my 5 one month late loans (grrr), so I wasn’t sure what to

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Las Vegas (airport)

I am now on a flight from Pittsburgh to Las Vegas and eventually back to SF.  Jess and I spent the last week celebrating Christmas in Pittsburgh — which was oddly warm this year.

I launched this blog a little over two years ago and did much of my first writing just after I quit my job.  That was also the year I celebrated Kwanzaa for the first time;  I never could find a black candle. 

Oh man, so much has changed since then! 

We had our annual board meeting in November.  One thing we did was present a pretty aggressive budget.  All in all, it adds up to about $4.7M in costs, up from just $1.7M in 2007 and $200K in 2006.  The main drivers of the costs are training, relationship managers and audits.  The staff costs associated with building an international partner base can be staggering.

That is some real growth and it was hard at first to swallow figures like that.  Hey, but it’s not us driving the growth.  It’s our lenders.  They are demanding it.   As I put it at a meeting with the Skoll Foundation a few weeks ago — we feel like we are at a "go big, or go home" point in our history.  Going small (or home) could be disastrous in a world as big as this one. 

What did we learn this year?  It boils down to three main lessons:

1) Lender enthusiasm is abundant
This is the biggest shock of the year — the sheer enormity of enthusiasm and untapped demand in the space of online microfinance.  In 2007, we went from $2M loaned to $18M in loans (cumulative).  We went from 30K users to over 200K.  We were on the Oprah Winfrey show, CNBC, the Today Show, ABC News, blah blah. Come on!  That’s crazy talk.  Seriously, those numbers would have broken my brain a year ago.  Scaling this model this year has felt like trying to fit the NBA finals into Stanford’s Maples Pavillion — not easy, but a lot of fun.   

2) Scaling partnerships is difficult
We are reaching out to the long tail of MFIs.  The microfinance world is colorful, scattered, bulging and full of promise.  There are thousands of MFIs out there within our reach.  That said, few of them are ready for truly commercial capital.  Even more, those that are commercially viable are soaking in debt capital.  Kiva is trying to change that game by creating a transparent, Internet based marketplace for MFIs of different shapes and sizes to reach out to the world of online lenders to raise capital for their borrowers.  We are now helping around 80 of such organizations expand their reach…fast.  Doing so can be a bumpy road.  Many MFIs aren’t equipped to handle rapid growth.  We have found that out the hard way.  The exuberance of this year has come back to haunt us at times.  We’ve had a few MFIs flame out completely because of mismanagement and even fraud.  Dealing with it has been heart-wrenching and has introduced a new pressure that sinks in as I sleep and jolts me awake in the morning. 

3) Our users desire transparency above all
The Kiva community of lenders continues to amaze me.  In effect, they are trading risk, and the hope of profits, for stories of impact and total transparency.   The more transparent and site we can make this marketplace, the more our lenders respond.  The site has gone through repeated, chronic and extended periods of inventory shortage.  Instead of trying to artificially rush the marketplace and grow at an abnormal pace, we have learned to simply be OK with the fact that we can’t grow the partner base as fast as the lender community demands.  In doing so, we have built a level of trust and understanding with our users.

In addition, the site has seen MFIs with high delinquency rates and others that have collapsed all together.  We currently have a 99% repayment rate, a 3% delinquency rate, and a refund rate of nearly 3%.  The last statistic covers a number of loans that we refunded to users this summer because we learned that not all of the funds reached the intended recipients.  We sent out a message to lenders indicating this fact and issuing the refund.  The response was incredible and it turned out to be a teachable moment for both Kiva and it’s lenders.  Refunding loans is not something we intend to continue as a long term policy!

So those are the main lessons we learned this year.  So what are we going to do?  We reduced our high level strategic goals to four:

1.  Double absorption capacity
2.  Diminish fraud
3.  Deepen lender engagement
4.  Increase transparency

This blog is too long, and we are boarding now.  I’ll dive into these points in the weeks to come.  Happy new year. 

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Cushie06’s Christmas Wish

Fred93 reposted an entry submitted to the Prosper blog that was reject. Normally I would let it stand there, but too many people have the same hope. Here is Cushie06’s Christmas wish for Prosper:

If I could wish for just one thing this holiday season …

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The Money Marathon – Support Will Carry You Through

There are support programs for everything in life. They are there for a reason, and the reason is that it is much easier to accomplish something when somebody is there with you who has gone through it, understands what you are going through and wants to you to pull through it and win.
In sports, [...]

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Best of RateLadder 4th Quarter 2007

This is a time of year reflection and goal setting for the year to come.  I think it has been a very interesting and prosperous year.
Here are some of my best and/or most popular posts from the 4th quarter of 2007…
October 2007:
Prosper Files S1 With SEC
Prosper Repurchases A Loan
MicroPlace, an Ebay Company Launches
RateLadder Reaches 10K Milestone
Quicken [...]

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New Globefunder homepage

Today I noticed that Globefunder.com has a new homepage. While still pre-launch, it lists 28 states with licenses and limits, explains GlobeFunder's internal Globe Ratings (minimum required credit score is 640).
The fees page only lists fees payed by borrowers, with the main loan closing fee at 1.75 percent or $50 (whichever is greater).
While Globefunder is [...]

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Knowing Where Your Charitable Contributions Go

In this season of giving, many people make charitable gifts. To ensure that your charitable contribution is as meaningful as possible, it’s important to know where your contribution actually goes.
In most cases, only a portion of your gift will go to the actual intended recipients or charitable purposes. All organizations have overhead and [...]

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Refused by Credit Unions, Yes by Prosper

From the Prosper Mailroom: Lambda_Phoenix_Rising

196 people who did not know me said YES when my own credit union, where I have been a member since 1979 and major on-line lenders said NO. Prosper members even bid my interest rate down 4% saving me hundreds of dollars over the life of my loan. Signing up was [...]

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Playing for Perfect Personal Finance

Like many football fans who grew up around Boston, I am a huge New England Patriots fan. Unless you’ve been living on Mars, you probably know that this Saturday night the Patriots are trying to become the first football team to finish the regular season with a perfect 16-0 record.
Take everything one [...]

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Lendingclub - reconsiders the bad math

A message from Patrick Gannon of Lendingclub …Date: 12/24/2007From: Patrick Gannon …Subj: Re: Lendingclub - bad mathThank you for your analysis of our ROI calculations. We are taking down the ROI section of the statistics page for now while we rev…

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Debt sale on Prosper: 701 loans

701 defaulted loans have been sold to debt buyers for prices ranging from 2.8% to 14.5% of principal. This is the largest debt sale on Prosper with more than twice as many late loans sold as the previous largest debt sale three months ago.Here are the…

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Debt Sale Results 12/2007

We completed a debt sale this week which will be evident as of today on the account pages of lenders who own loans that were sold.
When a loan is sold, it is marked as defaulted on the Prosper site and in the performance metrics. If one of your loans was sold you received or will [...]

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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 Credit @ 25% interest rate, homeowner, sold for [...]

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Twelve Posts of Review - April 2007

[In this series, I’m reviewing some of my better posts of 2007. If you started reading this blog in the middle of the year, this is a good time to catch up.]
In April, I wrote how

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New Businessweek Article on Prosper (and other P2P Lending Sites)

I was reading the latest edition of BusinessWeek online and came accross the article below, which discusses the P2P Lending environment and provides some very useful information on the pros and cons of each different service. This should give Prosper …

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The Money Marathon – Compete Against Yourself Only

In any competition, there are always ways to measure competitors. You could look at the time it takes them to finish, the distance they compete in, and the level of difficulty, just to name a few. The world’s best athletes set their first priority as competing against themselves and trying to better what they scored [...]

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Best of RateLadder 3rd Quarter 2007

This is a time of year reflection and goal setting for the year to come.  I think it has been a very intertesting and prosperous year.
Here are some of my best and/or most popular posts from the 3rd quarter of 2007…
July 2007:
WSJ Features ProProsper in P2P Lending Article
P2P No Bank — Aggregating P2P Lending Blogs [...]

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Review of peer to peer lending developments in 2007

2007 was an exciting and eventful year in the development of peer to peer lending. Looking back these were the highlights:

February: Boober.nl launches the first p2p lending service in the Netherlands.Prosper.com raises required borrower credit score to 520 and introduces other major changes
March: Smava.de launches German p2p lending service
April: Fairrates.dk offers person to person lending in [...]

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The Basis for Your Financial Habits

In my recent post about financial advice from friends and family, I discussed how those around you are the most likely sources of your financial advice. These people are also the ones who will influence your spending and savings habits.
This happens because your friends are usually your basis for defining what is “normal.” Seeing the [...]

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The Smart Take From The Strong

Pete Carill is the legendary former basketball coach of Princeton University. His style of play made famous through heartbreaking defeats such as the 1st round loss to Alonzo Morning’s Georgetown and brilliant victories like winning the 1975 NIT or Princeton’s victory over UCLA in the 1996 NCAA.
In semi-retirement he wrote a book The Smart Take [...]

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Our Best and Worst Wedding Registry Experiences (Hint: Avoid Sears)

This past year Energi Gal and I finally tied the knot. As part of the process we decided to register at a number of places. We picked three stores:
Macy’s - Macy’s has a strong national presence, which is great when you live in the San Francisco and your guests are from Boston. [...]

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Another Error in a National Newspaper on P2P Lending

Apparently this is fact checking Wednesday.
In the USA today is the article: peer-to-peer lending hits its stride
In this article a Prosper Lender is quoted…

Default rates are lower for peer-to-peer loans than for other consumer loans. Cory Moore became a lender on Prosper.com this year. To hedge against defaults, he spreads his risk by lending small sums [...]

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Kiva.org on The Today Show, tomorrow!

Kiva.org will really be appearing on The Today Show tomorrow, December 27, between 8am and 9am in each local timezone (exact airing time not known.)The segment will include footage from John Larson’s recent trip to Africa, so be sure to tell everyone y…

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Lending Club Loan Volume Misquoted in National Newspaper

I encourage all reporters to check facts. In the p2p lending space, both major US p2p lending companies provide data and this data can usually corroborate or debunk basic marketplace claims. 
I was reading a recent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article on p2p lending: The credit crunch: How did it happen and where do we go from here?  (Thanks [...]

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A Look Back at 2007 Goals

You know how to take the [rental car] reservation, you just don’t know how to hold the reservation and that’s really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them. - Jerry Seinfeld
Goals are a little bit like rental car reservations. Making goals is extremely easy. It’s achieving [...]

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Prosper.com is 90 days delinquent on payments to group leaders

MNH Report #5Prior to September 13, 2007, Prosper.com group leaders could opt to receive compensation for each loan funded within their groups. This compensation, which Prosper originally referred to by the inaccurate euphemism of “group rewards” …

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Keep your free credit report free

Brandon Hanson recently shared an experience which reminded me how even the very financially savvy can get burned by “free” credit reports:

“I hate credit checks - specifically, the ’say-it’s-free-but-really-it’s-not’ kind. I went on to a site promising a free credit report to get, surprisingly enough, a free credit report. Although I’m usually aware enough to [...]

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The Linkfest Clause

Merry Christmas to one and all. We’re an equal-opportunity blog, however, and would like to also extend a happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, and Festivus to you too! And have a joyous Boxing Day too.

My Experience As An HR Borrower

It is poss…

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Best of RateLadder 2nd Quarter 2007

This is a time of year reflection and goal setting for the year to come.  I think it has been a very intertesting and prosperous year.
Here are some of my best and/or most popular posts from the 1st 3 months of my blog…
April 2007:
Adam Nash Merged with RateLadder to form the Ideal Quicken Solution (without [...]

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Making Good Use of Upcoming Time Off

For many Americans, the end of the year also means having some time off from work. Whether it’s through company paid holidays or vacation time to travel and be with family, people often have a little more downtime than usual between Christmas and New Year’s Day. In her recent article, Jennifer Openshaw offers a suggestion [...]

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Should You Sweat “The Small Stuff?”

This is a common question in personal finance circles. Personal finance guru David Bach made the question popular by writing about people’s daily spending habits. He calls it the “Latte Factor” because so many people spend a few dollars a day on their morning specialty coffee. It doesn’t have to be limited to coffee. I’ve [...]

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Top RateLadder Referrers of My 1st Year

Thank you readers. Thank you p2p lending. Thank you referrers.
12/26/2007 is my 1 year anniversary.  As the start of the celebration I am thanking the top 10 (in terms of traffic for the entire year) blog referrers (some sites are more than just a blog).  These stats are with my own traffic removed.

Lazy Man and Money
P2P [...]

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