Maneesh Sethi — P2P No Bank

Finding the Frugality Habit: 4 Ways to Beat Internal Pressures

November 18th, 2008 — , Financial Education from Maneesh Sethi @ Lending Club

In my recent article, I discussed the frugality habit. I often find myself spending much more than I intend to, so I began asking myself why. One of the major reasons is the internal pressure – temptation, desire, and lack of discipline – that causes us to pull out our wallets and buy something we [...]

What Makes Frugality So Hard?

November 13th, 2008 — , Financial Education from Maneesh Sethi @ Lending Club

“It’s the same thing every month. I always have a perfect budget, and I know exactly how much I can spend each week. But somehow, it never works out. I suddenly check my purse and there is no money left. I find myself at the ATM time and time again. Why can’t I stop spending?”
I’m [...]

5 Ways to Succeed with Your Financial Plan

October 29th, 2008 — , Financial Education from Maneesh Sethi @ Lending Club

In a recent post, I wrote about how to make a plan for your financial goals. However, I’m sure you’ve made plans for other things, as well – such as losing weight, studying more, and other things. Chances are, you’ve failed a few times. Everyone has, and financial plans are no different than any other [...]

Got Financial Goals? How to Plan for Success

October 17th, 2008 — , Financial Education from Maneesh Sethi @ Lending Club

In a recent post, I wrote about the importance of goal setting if you want to change your financial situation. Without setting goals, how can you ever achieve them? Well, once you have your goals, you aren’t finished – you still need to work towards them! In other words, you need a plan.
With your goals [...]

How to Set Goals: The First Step to Financial Success is Knowing What You Want

September 30th, 2008 — , Financial Education from Maneesh Sethi @ Lending Club

If you don’t know where you’re going, who knows where you’ll end up? Whether you are trying to get out of debt, start investing, start saving for your child’s retirement, or anything else, it’s important to have a purpose. Without having any specific goals, it can be very hard to beat your financial worries. However, [...]

Creating the Saving Habit

May 6th, 2008 — , Financial Education from Maneesh Sethi @ Social Lending Blog - Lending Club

Do you have trouble instilling in yourself a habit that you want to make natural? For example, do you ever want to begin saving money, or prevent yourself from buying a coffee on the way to work? It’s often very hard to change yourself in a significant way because of inertia. You will likely do [...]

Doing What It Takes to Be Wealthy

April 29th, 2008 — , Financial Education from Maneesh Sethi @ Social Lending Blog - Lending Club

If you dream of being wealthy, getting completely out of debt, or funding an easy retirement, there’s something you should know. It’s not impossible. However, if you find yourself consistently deeper and deeper in debt, perhaps it’s time to change some of the bad habits that have kept you from achieving your goals.
Supposedly, one definition [...]

Did Your High School Require Personal Finance Classes?

April 23rd, 2008 — , Financial Education from Maneesh Sethi @ Social Lending Blog - Lending Club

Think back to your high school days. Did you ever learn anything about how to deal with money? Sure, you learned all about how geometry and algebra can be used in the real world, and how to interpret literature, but many schools never teach this most basic skill.
Good news is on the horizon, though. The [...]

Wealth Comparisons are Weird

April 17th, 2008 — , Financial Education from Maneesh Sethi @ Social Lending Blog - Lending Club

Would you rather earn $50,000 a year while other people make $25,000, or would you rather earn $100,000 a year while other people get $250,000? Assume for the moment that prices of goods and services will stay the same.
This question has been asked by researchers in the past, and the answer is always astonishing. An [...]

Changes in the Work World for 2008

April 9th, 2008 — , Financial Education from Maneesh Sethi @ Lending ClubSocial Lending Blog - Lending Club

Earlier this year, Fortune Magazine writers looked at several research studies to see what major changes are taking place in the working world in 2008. This meta-analysis of statistics is very interesting, especially for people considering taking a new job or moving into a new career. But first there are some key findings you should [...]

Looking for a new car? Look into cheap sedans.

February 27th, 2008 — Financial Education, Lending Club, bankrate, cars, dependable, depreciate, foreseeable, sedans, stimulus, toyota from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Choosing whether to buy a new or used car is one of the most common debates in the personal finance world. Although I usually tend to argue for buying a used car, I understand where some of the people in the new-car camp are coming from: they desire a car with dependability, a warranty, and [...]

What do you need to do to be a millionaire?

February 21st, 2008 — Financial Education, Lending Club, exceeds, kiplinger, million, millionaire, reach, thumb, usage, willingness from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

What’s the financial dream of most people? I bet, for many, the answer is to be a millionaire. Having a million dollars is a serious goal, but it isn’t impossible. What does it take? The willingness and ability to invest consistently, and the knowledge of what you need to do.
If you’re looking for a rule [...]

The Effects of Enveloping

January 15th, 2008 — Financial Education, Lending Club, cheat, curb, enveloping, habit, notes, overspend, overspending, qualities from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Remember the enveloping system? As I wrote in that article, “By putting all your money, broken down by specific categories, into different envelopes at the beginning of the month, you can easily account for your budget and make sure you don’t overspend.”
I tried creating categories such as “Work,” “Car,” “Going Out,” etc., and I [...]

Finally out of debt? Follow these steps to stay there.

January 8th, 2008 — Financial Education, Lending Club, achieving, actionable, backslide, failures, falling, goals, steps, unhealthy from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Have you ever been deep in debt? Debt can be taxing and unhealthy, but for many Americans it is a way of life. If you’re at this site, you probably are interested in making sure that you don’t have any bad debt.
Getting out of debt is difficult. Still, even once you are out of [...]

Find friends who support your financial decisions

January 4th, 2008 — Financial Education, Friends, Lending Club, break, breaking, fail, habit, hungry, quit, temptation from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Have you ever tried to break a habit? Think back to when you last tried to break a bad habit (eating when you weren’t hungry, for instance). What was the hardest part about breaking it?
When your social scene revolves around the item you were trying to get away from, it is incredibly hard to [...]

J.D. got out of debt – So can you!

January 2nd, 2008 — Financial Education, Lending Club, disappear, discouraged, excellent, feat, getrichslowly, goals, ratcheted, story from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Congratulations to J.D. over at GetRichSlowly. GetRichSlowly is one of the personal finance blogs I read daily, and it is definitely one of my 3 favorite blogs. J.D. just got himself out of debt after 20 years. That’s an amazing feat – getting out of debt is certainly a life-changing experience. Fortunately, J.D. was nice [...]

Getting the bonus you deserve

December 17th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, bonus, boss, deserve, goals, helped, leap, meeting, progress from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Are you interested in getting a bonus? Lobbying for a bonus can be one of the most difficult and scary things that you have to do in life—I know that I’ve always been scared to take the leap and ask my boss about a raise or a bonus. In many cases, however, it’s necessary.
When you [...]

The difference between cheap and frugal, revisited

November 28th, 2007 — Financial Education, Frugal, Lending Club, Series, agrees, cheap, difference, inherently, nutshell, quality, trent from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

In a very recent article, I talked about the difference between being cheap vs. being frugal. I defined the difference between the two as follows.

• Being cheap - You are unwilling to spend money on anything. Even stuff you need. You go out of your way to save money, even when it might not be a [...]

Cheap vs. Frugal - How to determine which one you are

November 23rd, 2007 — Financial Education, Frugal, Lending Club, Series, book, buying, cheap, difference, quality, spent, wallet from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

In my last article, I wrote about the difference between being cheap and being frugal. Here is how I defined the two.

• Being cheap - You are unwilling to spend money on anything. Even stuff you need. You go out of your way to save money, even when it might not be a great idea.

• Being [...]

A great resource for determining your crossover point

November 20th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, calculator, crossover, intersect, point, rest, retire, returns, ryan from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Remember the crossover point? The crossover point is my final investment goal–it is the point where the interest from your investments equals your income. Essentially, it is the point where you can retire and still be earning the same income.
After this topic received a lot of attention, one programmer took it upon himself to create [...]

The difference between being cheap and being frugal

November 19th, 2007 — Financial Education, Frugal, Lending Club, Series, bottle, cheap, cutting, ketchup, packets, squeezing, wisebread from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Are you cheap or frugal? Although everyone has different definitions for these words, here is how I use them:

• Being cheap - You are unwilling to spend money on anything. Even stuff you need. You go out of your way to save money, even when it might not be a great idea.

• Being frugal - You [...]

Some wise personal finance advice

November 14th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, advice, afraid, bankrate, barrel, belsky, experts, greedy, salt from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

What’s the best personal finance advice you’ve ever gotten? Bankrate.com asked eight financial experts that same question. What did they say?
These experts provided good advice. For example, Gary Belsky wrote, “Be afraid when people are greedy, and greedy when people are afraid. It’s basically, ‘Buy low and sell high.’ In general, I’ve been doing better [...]

Creating the investment habit

November 9th, 2007 — Lending Club, calendar, commit, consistently, fallingawake, habit, monitor, paycheck, percentage from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Starting to invest is just like starting to do anything—it’s easy to start but hard to keep up. The trick is that you have to make investing a habit—something you do naturally, easily, and without any difficulty. The hard part, of course, is creating the habit.
How do you create a habit? You have to begin [...]

Want to start a business? Start saving your money.

November 2nd, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, budgeting, businesses, cons, pros, quit, start—even, though—these, venture from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Have you ever dreamed of starting your own business and being your own boss with your own hours? It may seem like a dream, but it’s not impossible to attain—a majority of first-generation millionaires got there just by starting their own businesses. These aren’t just tech businesses though—these are electricians, plumbers, and other local small [...]

How to pay your bills online

November 1st, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, bargaineering, bills, counter, dealing, saves, skill, stack, transit from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Every time I go home, I see my mom sitting on the kitchen counter, writing numbers into her checkbook. She tells me she is “balancing it.” I didn’t even know what that meant until a couple years ago, but I’m glad that online tools have basically made it an unnecessary skill.
As we have mentioned often [...]

Money leaks—where is your money going?

October 30th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, amazon, books, capping, fines, foods, insidious, leaks, reminder from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Everyone has certain items that they love to spend money on. For me, I can’t resist a good book on Amazon, even when I already have too many books in my backlog.
When I look at my monthly expenses, I see that a lot of my money is going to Amazon to get these books even [...]

How does your financial situation compare?

October 29th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, frugally, marriage, median, olds, predicts, rosy, wobegon, young from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

When you look at your current situation, do you think that you’re doing better or worse than the average person your age? While the Lake Wobegon Effect predicts that you probably think you’re doing much better than anyone else, we actually have statistics to show how you are doing.
MSN released a report about the debt, [...]

Invest today. I’m serious.

October 26th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, aspx, buffett, compound, fool, generator, million, toughest, warren from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Do you need any proof that today is the day you should invest? I have an article for you that might just inspire you to invest today.
The Motley Fool wrote an article about how the first million is the toughest. Because of the miracle of compound interest, the time it takes to get your first [...]

Money Suckers

October 23rd, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, bucks, cable, coffee, milk, recurring, suck, sucker, suckers from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Where is your money going? When you look at your bank account at the end of the month, do you know where all that money went? Unless you keep a detailed budget, you probably have no idea how your money went from ‘yeaaa’ to ‘yikes’ in 30 days.
Where does your money go? A lot of [...]

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Tips for the super paranoid—hiding your PIN code

October 22nd, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, code, hitting, paranoid, password, plane, watching, “backspace”, “clear” from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Are you afraid that someone behind you is watching you as you type your PIN code at the ATM? Maybe the Man is watching you from afar? Well, the Cranking Widgets blog has a useful tip on how to hide your PIN code from potential miscreants.
The trick in doing so is to simply hit [...]

The 7 Steps to a Perfect Investment Plan

October 19th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, allocation, assess, asset, determine, hardest, stocks, timeline, tolerance from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

The hardest part of starting a new project is taking the first step. Personal finance books and blogs are everywhere, but no advice will make a difference if you don’t actually follow it!
Getting started in investing can be a scary thing, but I have found that the easiest way to get started is to have [...]

College Student Savings Tips – Always Compare Online

October 18th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, amazon, bookstore, discounted, drastically, ebay, prices, shipping, subscription from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Trying to save money? Look online before buying anything. Seeing as how you are reading this blog, you are already well connected to the Internet, so you have probably already shopped online. However, you may still be surprised at how much stuff you can find online at drastically discounted prices.
For example, magazine subscriptions. First [...]

Tips to Curb Impulse Buys: The 30-Day List

October 17th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, buys, curb, curbing, impulse, list, mall, reconsidering, write from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Are you one of those people who have trouble curbing impulse buys? Do you ever go out shopping and come home with way more than you meant to? If so, there is help—a way to stop you from buying the things you don’t really need. All it takes is a piece of paper and a [...]

Asset Allocation

October 16th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, allocate, allocation, asset, assets, portfolio, risk, stocks, tolerance from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

As you begin investing, you will probably be putting a lot of money in one type of investment—index funds, or stocks, bonds, CDs, and of course P2P loans. However, as your investments grow, you will need to consider how you will allocate your assets.
Asset allocation is the process of choosing where your investments will go [...]

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Some great tips for living frugally

October 15th, 2007 — Financial Education, Frugal, Lending Club, begun, dumbbells, eating, fast, frugally, noticed, tips from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Over at Zen Habits, there is a great post with 50 tips on how to live cheaply and frugally. Are you looking for ways to reduce your spending? Head over to the post.
A lot of these tips are incredibly excellent—so much so that I’ve begun incorporating them into my daily life.
#6 - Eat Out [...]

Hidden Costs: Don’t Forget the Total Cost of Ownership

October 12th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, item, mint, moving, ownership, owning, rent, sticker, upgrading from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

“This new rent totally fits within my budget.” It seems so simple, right? If the rent for your new place is $500 more than for your last place, then you need to make sure that you have at least $500 extra to pay for it, right?
But wait a minute. Moving to the new place costs [...]

Incredible statistics about millionaires in America

October 10th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, door, drive, ford, impossible, jaguars, millionaire, millionaires, truth from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

So you want to be a millionaire, huh? For most, being a millionaire seems a faraway and impossible goal. When I was younger, being a millionaire seemed impossible–to me, millionaires got there by having rich parents. Millionaires were the people driving Jaguars and high-end BMWs, and living in huge houses. What are your thoughts on [...]

The Have’s, the Have-Not’s, and the Have-Not-Paid-For-What-You-Have’s

October 9th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, consumerism, culture, have’s, joke, kids, media, not’s, parent from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

“There are three types of people in the world.”
My sociologist teacher said this to me once. I was expecting the standard joke: those who can count and those who can’t. Oh man, that joke makes me laugh so much, especially the 312,412th time I’ve heard it.
“The Have’s, the Have-Not’s, and the Have-Not-Paid-For-What-You-Have’s.”
It took me a [...]

The rampant rise of consumerism

October 8th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, closest, floor, house, houses, item, redecorating, trump, wealth from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Want to be broke? All you have to do is try to keep up with the Joneses. If you look around, you can see expensive cars, big houses, extremely pricey jewelry, and other costly displays of wealth. When people have the wealth to pay for these items, this is more acceptable—some rich people want to [...]

Super-anxious because of small changes in the market?

October 5th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, afraid, anxious, effect, fear, feeling, human, stock, super from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

That might be a symptom of being human.
It’s a very strange feeling when you start investing—any small change in the market can make you afraid you are going to go broke. The smallest drop in your stock or fund might send you running to the hills.
Unfortunately, this is the same feeling that creates unsuccessful, stressed-out [...]

What Tim Ferriss has to say about going broke

October 4th, 2007 — Lending Club, Scale, choosing, ferriss, happen, realized, scenario, temporary, worst from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

In any investment decision, it is important to understand your risk tolerance. Each time you create a P2P loan portfolio on Lending Club, there is an opportunity to indicate your risk sensitivity on a scale of 1-5. Choosing your risk level determines which types of loans will be put into your portfolio. So it is [...]

Deferred Gratification - Would you pass the marshmallow test?

October 3rd, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, buffett, delay, gratification, impatient, marshmallow, patient, speech, warren from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Can you delay your gratification? Or do you need to see results right now?
One experiment, done in the 1960s, involved giving several children a marshmallow and promising them more marshmallows if they could wait for 20 minutes before eating the first one. Some could, but some couldn’t. The researchers followed up and watched the kids [...]

Failing at enveloping—what went wrong

October 2nd, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, beginning, budgeting, complexity, envelope, envelopes, enveloping, spent, wallet from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Remember enveloping? Enveloping is a method of tracking your finances and creating a budget by putting all your money in envelopes at the beginning of the month. In doing so, you choose categories and spending limits for each of the categories. By putting money in each envelope at the beginning of the month, you know [...]

Money Saving Tips - Buy Generic

October 1st, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, brand, brands, difference, generic, quality, rice, store, taboo from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Earlier, I wrote about the benefits of buying used items. Now let’s look at buying generic.
The Simple Dollar has written a great article on how to get over the taboo of generic and store-brand goods. The Simple Dollar makes a good point–yes, buying the same reliable brand is a good way to make sure that [...]

Student loans revisited

September 28th, 2007 — Financial Education, Lending Club, accrue, begins, finaid, finish, repaying, student, subsidized, unsubsidized from Maneesh Sethi @ Better Rates. Together.

Colleges will often offer student loans as part of their financial aid packa

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