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5 Ways to Layoff-Proof Your Job

November 20th, 2008 — , Features from DebtKid @ Lending Club

Are you vital to your employer?
If your answer is, “absolutely!” then congratulations, your job is probably safe. If you hesitated, it may be time to look at how to layoff-proof your position. With companies laying off workers across a broad spectrum of industries, if you’re not vital you just might be expendable.
Make yourself absolutely [...]

Blue Chip Blues: Alternative Investments for a Bear Market

November 13th, 2008 — , Features from DebtKid @ Lending Club

For equity investors, the good news is that the year is almost over. The bad news is that the future is still quite uncertain. So how do you handle a bear market, especially a bear market that’s more angry Grizzly bear than tame Winnie the Pooh? You get creative. You think outside the normal “buy [...]

Catching up with… Eric Petroelje from ericscc.com

November 11th, 2008 — , Features from Rob Garcia @ Lending Club

1.Tell us a little bit about how you got into the person to person lending space?
I first heard about p2p lending on the Dave Ramsey show back in April of 2006. He was actually talking about how he couldn’t think of anything crazier to do with your money than lend it out to strangers [...]

Extreme Frugality: 7 (Slightly Crazy) Ways to Save Money

November 6th, 2008 — , Features from DebtKid @ Lending Club

Sometimes it pays to be a little crazy. I went through a period of extreme frugality in my life (living in my office, showering at a gym, no bank account, etc). It’s not something I want to repeat again. Group showers aren’t exactly my thing. That being said, for the truly ambitious penny pincher, these [...]

Holiday Console Wars: Microsoft’s Xbox 360 vs. Sony’s PS3

November 4th, 2008 — , Features from Kevan Lee @ Lending Club

One of the most popular gifts this holiday season will be video game consoles, leading to one of the most popular reasons for missing Christmas dinner being “but I’m only 300 points away from the next level!”
The holidays bring out the purchasing in everyone, or so the major video game companies hope.
Traditionally, November and [...]

The 7 Scariest Investment Mistakes

October 28th, 2008 — , Features from DebtKid @ Lending Club

This year’s Halloween seems to be all tricks and no treat for most investors. Stocks have taken a beating in October, leaving many investors wondering “What now?”. The markets are downright spooky right now, spookier than clowns. I hate clowns.
So, what can you do?

Be creative and get frugal with your Halloween costume this year. I [...]

The 7 Deadly Sins of Day Trading

October 21st, 2008 — , Features from DebtKid @ Lending Club

Mistakes in day trading can be downright brutal, and no amount of “Hail Mary”s can save a trading account when you commit these sins. How do I know? I committed them all.
With the new Lending Club secondary market open for trading, you’re now able to trade your loan notes on a liquid marketplace.
Just make [...]

The Lending Club Offers New Alternative for Consumer Credit Following $600 Million SEC Registration

October 16th, 2008 — , Features, In the News, Lenders, Lending Club, P2P Lending, borrowers, credit instruments, distrust, economy, financial crisis, financial institutions, interest rates, investments inc, liquidity, loans, mainstream adoption, quiet period, reason consumers, sec registration, securities and exchange, securities and exchange commission, trading platform, united states securities, viable investment from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

Back in April of this year, the Lending Club announced that it would be going into a quiet period due to the beginning of a registration process involving the SEC, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Now the Lending Club is pleased to announce that the process has been completed, and now the Lending [...]

The 7 Most Useful (and Free!) Online Apps for Managing Your Money

October 7th, 2008 — , Features from DebtKid @ Lending Club

In high school, I learned how to balance a paper checkbook. It was the year 2000, and it was a complete and utter waste of time. I was an Internet savvy, “I want things now” type of kid, and I wanted my finances to be real-time savvy as well. The last few years of Web [...]

4 Practical Ways to Cut Spending and Thrive During a Financial Crisis

October 2nd, 2008 — , Features from Kevan Lee @ Lending Club

Not spending money is harder than it sounds.
American consumers are increasingly cutting back during these tough economic times, which is a bummer since Sonic banana splits are only 99 cents.
But the reasoning makes sense. Keep as much money as you can until the stock market and the banks and the scores of other financial institutions [...]

Extreme Savings with Belated Holiday Scheduling

September 30th, 2008 — , Features from Kevan Lee @ Lending Club

While walking through Target one fine September day, I came across aisles upon aisles of Halloween costumes and decorations. There were pumpkin baskets and paper spiders and witches and skeletons and bats. The walls were stuffed with candy, so much so that my fillings hurt just looking at it. I was overwhelmed by the overwhelming [...]

7 Steps to Survive Unemployment and Land the Job You’ve Always Wanted

September 25th, 2008 — , Features from DebtKid @ Lending Club

Were you recently let go? Do you know someone who just lost their job? This past week my mother lost her job. I’m sure I’m not the only one who knows someone who has lost their job this year.
You can survive unemployment and put that pink slip behind you. Here’s how:
1.Tell Everyone and Their Mom [...]

Is Shopping on Woot Financially Responsible?

September 23rd, 2008 — , Features from Kevan Lee @ Lending Club

Do I really need two sets of AM/FM walkie-talkies?
I was approached by this conundrum out of the blue one afternoon, and neither I nor my monthly entertainment stipend was prepared to broach the subject. Unfortunately, the subject needed to be broached.
The question was posed as a result of my visiting Woot.com, an online store that [...]

5 Low-Cost Businesses You Can Start From Your Dorm Room

September 18th, 2008 — , Features from DebtKid @ Lending Club

Michael Dell… Mark Zuckerberg… You?
Michael Dell started his computer empire from his dorm room at the University of Texas with just $1000. He dropped out his freshman year to run his growing company full time.
Zuckerberg created the now ubiquitous Facebook while at Harvard.
Even if you don’t plan on being a lifetime entrepreneur, starting a [...]

7 Things I Did Right With My Start-up That Still Make Me Smile

September 2nd, 2008 — , Features from DebtKid @ Lending Club

Last week I wrote about the 7 things I did wrong with my start-up. This week, I hash out what I think I got right.
1. I Hired Two C’s - College Students and Contractors
If your business is near a college (whose isn’t?) and you’re not hiring college students, you are throwing money and good talent [...]

Social Lending… and Push-Ups

August 29th, 2008 — , Features from Andy Kuo @ Lending Club

Venture capitalist Paul Graham has a famous essay on 8 lessons for startups. I’d like to add a ninth lesson to the list: You Will Get Fat. Being stressed supposedly causes weight loss, but the effect is easily offset by an abundant supply of food. Whether it’s the weekly catered lunches, or [...]

16 Top ‘Bang For Your Buck’ Services for Small Businesses

August 19th, 2008 — , Features from DebtKid @ Lending Club

Running a small business is hard work. Between generating new clients, managing employees and vendors, did you schedule a backup of your hard drive?
I didn’t think so.
These 16 online resources and low-cost services can make life easier (and cheaper!) for the small business owner, freelancer or startup.
Project Tracking
To-do List: Tadalist.com
While I prefer an old-fashioned [...]

Lending Club Updates Lending Functionality

July 21st, 2008 — , Features, Lenders, Lending Club, Site Review, account management, busy at work, conclusions, group loans, loan performance, long time, money, monthly statements, motivation, portfolios, quiet period from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

A few weeks ago Rob Garcia at Lending Club announced updates to the lending account management features. I apologize it has taken me this long to cover the update, but I have been busy at work and frankly without lenders having the ability to lend money I was lacking motivation. Well I got to it [...]

July ‘08 Release: Better P2P Lending Account Management Features

July 10th, 2008 — , Features, Lending Club from Rob Garcia @ Lending Club

We are pleased to roll out a few new features that will make our lenders’ lives easier:
Monthly Statements
P2P lenders at Lending Club can now see a clear snapshot of their account each month. An account summary shows monthly interest earnings and variation in account value, as well as the asset allocation by loan grade. [...]

Add P2P Lending News To Your Website

May 11th, 2008 — , Features from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

Apparently this has ability has been built into wordpress for quite some time but a friend of mine recently pointed up that it can be done (pfblogs popular posts added to sidebar.) Here is the wordpress codex for this feature: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/fetch_rss.
To add the p2p lending news to my sidebar I added the following to my [...]

Catching up with… Lazy Man and Money

April 5th, 2008 — , Features, lazy, tank from DebtKid @ Better Rates. Together.

You recently wrote about saving up for a tank. I love tanks as much as the next guy, but would a tank really be a wise investment?
A friend challenged me six weeks ago to write something different and eye-catching. I have to admit that I can only read about Roth IRAs so many times [...]

RateLadder Loan And Portfolio Plan Power

February 5th, 2008 — , Features, Listing Review, Prosper.com, Statistics, Strategy, Tools from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

My Prosper Listing has 1 day left in the auction. I reached 100% funding late afternoon last Wednesday. Today is the final day to bid on my loan request. Short of an Act of God this loan is as safe as they come.
My listing fell into the the conservative portfolio plan standing order #2 whose [...]

Lending Club Stats

January 29th, 2008 — , Features, Lending Club, Site Review from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

If you want to try Lending Club be sure to sign up with this link to receive $25 bonus.
Until now LendingClub has lacked a customer friendly loan and listing statistics site. Sure you could sql query the data at ProProsper (select * from lendingclubloanstats), even though it is powerful it lacks consumer friendliness and a certain pizazz.
Introducing [...]

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Lending Club’s New Site Features: Did You Notice Them?

January 24th, 2008 — Features, Lending Club, LendingMatch, delinquencies, navigation, rateladder, rejected, search, view, wire from Rob Garcia @ Better Rates. Together.

Over the weekend, we added several improvements to our site. Our team worked hard to get the new features out, and we’ve enjoyed hearing from many of you who noticed them.
We were particularly pleased that our blogger friends at Personal Loan Portfolio, Lazy Man and Money, RateLadder, and My Microfinance covered our new release, [...]

Lending Club Bonus, Higher Interest Rates, and Website Updates

January 22nd, 2008 — , Features, Lending Club from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

Over the weekend Lending Club updated their website and raised the base interest rate 25 basis points. They have an incredible 5% bonus if you lend $5000 or more by February 3rd and a $25 bonus for new members that signup using this link.
I like the new account summary screen VERY much.

I was very hopeful [...]

Lending Club Performance Updates

January 7th, 2008 — Announcements, Features, Lending Club, Statistics, intent, pages, performance, projections, ranking, reliable, section from Patrick Gannon @ Better Rates. Together.

We are focused on making our person-to-person lending site as simple and reliable as possible. As Barron’s wrote this weekend, Lending Club and other P2P lending sites strive to be “highly automated, remarkably transparent, and employ Web 2.0-era ways of matching borrowers to lenders.” To that end, we are releasing a series of improved [...]

New Prosper Changes Digested

December 19th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

My apologies for the verbatim post last night… But it was late…
Here are the changes that affect me as a lender and 3rd party developer…
On the Lender screen in the active loan summary there has been added a break down of payments received as well as a summary (principal, interest, and late fees). And a [...]

Prosper Site Update 12/2007

December 19th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

Verbatim from amf of Prosper…
All,
Tonight we did a bunch of back-end work and made a couple of changes that you might notice…

Lender overview changes
We’ve received a lot of feedback from lenders that the “Active loan summary” box on the “Your Account > Lending” page is confusing and unclear. Furthermore, it looks like some of the [...]

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Prosper Interest Rates On the Rise

December 12th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com, Statistics, Strategy, Tools from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

Prosper interest rates are on the rise — in case you where wondering this is a good thing for lenders!
The release of the borrower bidding guidance (general announcement, secondary analysis) seems to line up with a rise in near prime and sub prime interest rates. Similarly, the graph that I am using to demonstrate my [...]

Ayn Rand Indecisive Liberal, Prosper Blog, and Other Prosper Changes

December 6th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com, Site Review from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

Prosper CEO called Ayn Rand an indecisive liberal when compared to Prosper Lenders. In his blog post on money and merit, Chris Larsen uses The Cathedral and The Bazaar to make the argument that p2p lending is toppling cathedrals… I find the Ayn Rand assertion hilarious.
And Prosper has an official Blog. I have written a [...]

General Opinion of New Prosper Forums

November 29th, 2007 — Features, P2P Lending Forums, Prosper.com from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

I had such high hopes for the new Prosper forums, which is why it makes me a little sad to find myself agreeing with the general sentiment (but not the harsh rhetoric) of both Prosperous Land (Prosper’s New Forums Not So Hot) and zcommodore (new forums basically worthless). As both these links provide the gorey details [...]

New Prosper Forum Becomes Reality

November 27th, 2007 — Features, P2P Lending Forums, Prosper.com from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

ChrisFS called it — New Prosper Forum.
With the site upgrade tonight Prosper announced a new forum. Here is the official announcment…
Dear Prosper Community,
Today we are announcing the start of a new discussion forum system that will replace the existing forums. The forums were established to help guide and construct a new marketplace for lending among [...]

RateLadder Quicken ROI Update November 1, 2007

November 26th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com, Quicken, Statistics, Tools from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

I have decided to continue to track my Quicken ROI even though Prosper has removed the Prosper ROI link from the lending tab. I have also decided to keep the Prosper ROI on the graph for reference.
This Quicken ROI is calculated using the method described here.
My Quicken Prosper ROI went from 11.96% to 12.34%. [...]

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Prosper Updating Forum?

November 25th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

I received an email from a regular reader (chrisfs)… He let me know about this late last week, but due to my blog problems I have waited til now to post it…
The screen he is talking about can be found here. It may or may not point to the page he references, but at the [...]

RateLadder’s Desired Lending Club Lender Functionality

November 22nd, 2007 — Features, Lending Club from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

I believe in index funds and not timing the market. Most of my investments are in low cost market tracking index finds. Sure I have some play money in individual investments… I own Oracle (ORCL) (100 shares for sentimental reasons as my former employer); I own Haier Electronics (via OTC: HRELF) (11,000 shares as a play money bet [...]

Lending Club’s Newest Features: Increasing Simplicity and Functionality

November 21st, 2007 — Features, Lending Club, Referral, email, functionality, months, performance, publish, question, yourscreenname from Rob Garcia @ Better Rates. Together.

What a busy couple of months it’s been! Everyone at Lending Club is thrilled to have grown our community so fast since our public launch slightly over two months ago.
I always mention how important your feedback and comments are to us, but the last couple of months have been particularly helpful to Lending Club [...]

Portfolio Plans — The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

November 18th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

I think Prosper is doing some interesting things lately and Portfolio Plans are no exception…
A portfolio plan is a series of slices of data that when combined make getting into a diversified investment of Prosper loans extremely simple. There are 4 risk levels for the current plans.

Conservative (estimated ROI 8.37%)
Balanced (estimated ROI 9.14%)
Moderate (estimated ROI [...]

Prosper In House Collections Letter

November 17th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com, collections from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

Just read this on the forum from a formerly late borrower (Mr Deluxe)…
My loan was recently under 30 days late (now current) I received several emails from Prosper, but the letter I got in today’s mail was very effective.
It was a letter from Prosper reminding me that 155 people contributed to my loan and they [...]

Prosper Collections Test In Progress

November 16th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

I had noticed several days ago that several of my delinquent loans had a new agency with the name “NEW AGENCY TEST”…
Today I received the following email from Prosper…
Prosper is committed to improving our collections on delinquent loans. To do this, we plan to test collection alternatives to provide lenders with better collections rates across [...]

Eric’s CC Extended Credit Breakdown

November 9th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com, Site Review from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

Eric’s Community Credit is the 1st 3rd party site to make use of the new extended credit data available via the Authenticated API. As you can see in the picture below or by following this link to RateLadder’s profile on Eric’s CC… he has added a chart breaking down my loans by 3 extended credit [...]

Expired Listings Visible on Prosper Again!

November 8th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

The community spoke…
What??? You can’t take away expire listings!!!!
How am I supposed to learn?
How am I supposed to check up on my standing orders?
This is ludacris.
etc.etc.etc.
9 days later the initial expired listing decision was modified when the site was updated last night. Now expired listings can be seen by authenticated lenders. Lenders that [...]

Prosper Estimated Return Guidance Pessimistic Example — aka PML #5 — Pay off high interest home improvement cards

November 4th, 2007 — Features, Listing Review, Prosper.com, Statistics, Strategy, Tools, goals from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

In my Friday post, I encouraged everyone to think for themselves when it comes to estimated return guidance. It is after all only an estimate. Today, I would like to pimp a listing I have bid on that I feel demonstrates a great return loan, but it is a fairly risky bucket. [...]

54 Segments of Prosper Data = Thin Data

November 2nd, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com, Statistics, Tools from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

One of Prosper’s most recent changes was to add bidding guidance on the manual bid page. See the picture below.

I think this is a great feature in theory. It makes the estimated return obvious using Prosper’s own roll rates. I am sure this will be an incredibly valuable feature for all manual bidding lenders.
However, I [...]

Authenticated API

October 31st, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com, Tools from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

I think the authenticated API is big news. It signals additional development in an area that will benefit the entire community… I hope that there is much more to come.
Here I will quickly run down various things I have done with the API since the inception…
First of all ProProsper — Professional Tool For Prosper Lenders… [...]

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Prosper Files S1 With SEC

October 31st, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

I am not sure I know what it means or what it is for. Something about…
Prosper Marketplace Lender Participant Rights
$500,000,000 Prosper Marketplace Borrower Non-Recourse Notes
Any ideas on what this will be used for? The implications? Speculation on the forums is maybe the secondary market.
Here is a link to the Prosper S1 SEC Filing
From Wikipedia (here):
Form [...]

Big Prosper Changes — 2nd Loans, Authenticated API, 0% on AA, 36% Max Rate, and Portfolio Plans

October 30th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

Big changes for Prosper today in new release…

Borrowers can now have second loans
Authenticated API for access to extended credit and a lender’s loans for lenders
0% servicing fee on AA credit
In states where rates aren’t capped the new maximum is 36%
Portfolio Plans might be the biggest change of all.
Bidding guidance based on Prosper default rates (see picture).

Here is [...]

Prosper Repurchases A Loan

October 26th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com, Statistics, Tools from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

Yesterday, I had one of those bitter sweet moments.
Sweet in that a loan I had been writing off in my mind as bad was repurchased by Prosper for the full principal balance. Bitter, because I really believe I am helping people with these loans and yet someone would take advantage and try to steal my [...]

Prosper Launches “Real” Facebook App

October 10th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

From “Prosper Jon”… (I am on Facebook and I am using this application.)
—-
We recently launched a beta Facebook application called “Prosper”. This is one of the upcoming features alluded to by Andrew in his Sep 12 site update announcement.
As some of you know, we’ve experimented with the Facebook Platform in the past by developing a game [...]

Prosper People-to-People Lending Market Survey

October 9th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com, Statistics from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

San Francisco – October 9, 2007 – Prosper (www.prosper.com), America’s largest people-to-people lending marketplace, today released its September People-to-People Lending Market Survey. Prosper’s People-to-People Lending Market Survey provides key statistics and a market commentary by Chris Larsen, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Prosper.
Prosper’s People-to-People Lending Market Survey is released on the second Tuesday [...]

0 Current Delinquencies Late Curves

October 6th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com, Statistics, Strategy, Tools from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

Yesterday I published a new installment of the Prosper Late Curves. Several readers have asked if I could pull the data for one slice or another. While it would be possible to pull any advanced search slice out of the Prosper performance page, it is rather time consuming to pull the data by hand. And these [...]

Updated September Prosper Late Curves

October 5th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com, Statistics, Strategy, Tools from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

Updated Lates Curves…
By Count

By Amount

Continue reading → Updated September Prosper Late Curves

Prosper IRR Lender “Game” September 07 Update

October 3rd, 2007 — Features, Prosper Lender IRR "Game", Prosper.com, Statistics, Strategy, Tools from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

It is time for the end of September 2007 update of the IRR Lender “Game.”
This month was just a regular month. A Collections guru was hired and I did have a collections paymnet at the last second that saved me from a negative model IRR. Hopefully, a sign of things to come.
This is going to [...]

Q & A with Doug Fuller, Prosper’s Vice President of Operations

October 2nd, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com, Statistics, Strategy from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

This is a verbatim reprint of a Prosper forum annoucment…
Doug Fuller, background:
For over two decades Doug Fuller has been a leader in data driven operations management and process optimization with a specialty in collections and risk-management.
Most recently he served as Chief Research Officer at Credigy, a provider of receivables management services focused on the purchase and [...]

Advanced Search of My Portfolio

September 30th, 2007 — Features, Prosper.com from RateLadder @ Rate Ladder

Recently I had a startling discovery while Analyzing My Late Loans on Prosper. I made this discovery becasue it is a fairly simple thing to look at my 14 or so late loans and see their extended credit. The commonality jumped off the page. However, now I want to go back and look at my entire [...]

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