Lending and Borrowing Personal Loans with Lending Club and Prosper

What NOT to say in your Personal Loan Application

July 10, 2009 By Personal Loan Portfolio 6 Comments

I have been reviewing through a large number of Lending Club loans and noticed some humorous descriptions of the reasons why people want the loan. These should serve as advice for anyone who is planning to write up a Lending Club loan application. Remember that most all lenders are investors and want their money back with interest. The main reason that people loan borrowers money is not because you need it but because they believe that you can and will pay back the loan.

Loans are similar to requesting a tourist visa to come to visit the US — the person deciding whether to give the potential visitor the visa wants to know the reason you want to visit mainly to see that it is reasonable. The main thing that they want to know is that you plan to return to your country after you visit.

You need to say SOMETHING in your loan reasoning. Loans numbered 76775, 89258 have the description field left entirely blank and even the subject line does not give any indication of what the money is for. Loan 76775 was not funded but the other one was.
A loan should not be an income supplement. “I just need something that can help me supplement my income a little” People do not loan you money for your day to day income. If you cannot make your current obligations, how are you going to pay off the loan? Loan 74288 was not funded.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Borrowing, Lending Club Tagged With: Borrowing, Lending Club

Lending Club IRA – Reader Polls

April 1, 2009 By Personal Loan Portfolio Leave a Comment

Since I posted that I am excited about the Lending Club IRA and plan to invest in the Lending Club IRA, I wanted to hear what your opinion is on the topic. The first question is what do you think overall of the idea of the Lending Club IRA and the second asks if you personally plan to invest in a Lending Club IRA>

Do you think the Lending Club IRA is a good idea?

Yes (76%, 26 Votes)
No (24%, 8 Votes)

Total Voters: 34

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Will you invest in a Lending Club IRA?

No (38%, 13 Votes)
Yes (32%, 11 Votes)
Maybe (30%, 10 Votes)

Total Voters: 34

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Please vote and share your thoughts in the comments below.

Filed Under: Lending Club Tagged With: Lending Club, poll

Lending Club IRA: Why it is good for your retirement

March 31, 2009 By Personal Loan Portfolio 19 Comments

I am thrilled to hear about the new Lending Club IRA account to allow peer to peer lending in an retirement account. EntrustCAMA, part of the Entrust Group, is the account administrator. I heard of the Lending Club IRA only a few weeks ago through the comments by a beta tester on my initial review of Lending Club post.

Why is this the Lending Club IRA Big News? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Lending Club Tagged With: Lending Club, P2P Lending News

Free Kiva Gift Certificate Experiment Results

March 11, 2009 By Personal Loan Portfolio 3 Comments

A few months ago, I gave away a few Kiva Gift Certificates — one via this blog, one via Twitter, and one via Facebook. I wanted to share with you where they went.

Tom at Prosper Lending Review used the first Kiva Certificate. He selected a loan for a restaurant owner in [Read more...]

Filed Under: Kiva, Promotions Tagged With: Kiva

One Year Review: My Prosper Lending Experience

January 13, 2009 By Personal Loan Portfolio 21 Comments

Prosper Update January 2009 from http://www.ericscc.com

It has been some time since I have opened my Prosper account. Finally, I logged on a few minutes ago to transfer out money again because I want keep my account free of cash since the SEC cease and desist order against Propser and the quiet period have increased the possibility that Prosper could fold. I have been worried about the default rate since that order. The SEC actions combined with all the talk on the internet of how many loans on Prosper go into default probably trigger some people to feel stupid for actually paying on their Prosper loans despite the obligation and the impact to the credit score.

So how are my Prosper Marketplace P2P loans fairing? My loans’ average loan credit grade is an A minus so I have not been chasing 30%+ low-credit-score loans. Currently, I have three late loans out of 16 loans, so 18% of my Prosper loans are late.

Update: See the bottom of this post for an update. From the time I drafted this post until a few days later, another loan is now late.

According to [Read more...]

Filed Under: Performance, Prosper Tagged With: Prosper

Prosper and Lending Club Google Advertisements

January 12, 2009 By Personal Loan Portfolio Leave a Comment

Looking at my new fascinating woopra statistics, I clicked on a few of the keywords that appear in the dashboard. I noticed that there are several advertisements (adwords) that appear in Google results related to peer-to-peer lending. So I searched on several related key terms to see what appeared in the google paid search results. I thought that I would save the results so that I can later compare how these results change over time since changes in the paid advertisements may indicate changes in the P2P lending market.

Key Word: Prosper
Results: 14 million results
Paid Search results include: [Read more...]

Filed Under: P2P Lending News Tagged With: affiliate programs, Lending Club, P2P Lending News

Vote for Uncrunch America at Change.Org One More Time

January 6, 2009 By Personal Loan Portfolio 2 Comments

Thanks to everyone who voted the first time to land Uncruch America in the top 10 plans at change.org. There is now a second round of voting at change.org where the top ten plans are in a runoff vote. So you need to go vote for it one more time. Here is the link:

Vote to Uncrunch America

Thanks!

And I promise this will be the last post for a while on voting for P2P lending sites — unless of course Uncrunch or Kiva wins.

Filed Under: The Economy Tagged With: economy, poll

Vote For P2P Lending: Crunchies and Change.Org

December 31, 2008 By Personal Loan Portfolio 6 Comments

There are two great ways that you can support peer to peer lending with a simple mouse click.

1) Vote for Kiva.org — the micro lending site for entrepreneurs in the developing world in the Crunchies which are a major web award. Vote at the 2008 crunchies website under the category of most likely to make the world a better place.

2) Vote for Uncrunch America at Change.org which is being sponsored by Lending Club. Uncrunch America is a newly formed NGO that has been submitted to help change America using the voting system on Change.org. It is based upon the idea that there is lots of money available but hoarded and lots of people in need of money. The top three ideas will be moved to a second round of voting for a runoff election. The the overall top 10 ideas for changing America will be presented to the new administration on Inauguration Day.

About Uncrunch America from Change.org: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Kiva, P2P Lending News, The Economy Tagged With: economy, Kiva, poll

Kiva.org Goes Wanting for Borrowers! $1 Million Loaned this week!

December 31, 2008 By Personal Loan Portfolio 4 Comments

For Christmas I posted the free Kiva gift certificate. Tom from Prospser Lending Review redeemed it, but there are no loans open on Kiva right now for him to use the certificate.

From the scrolling banner on Kiva’s site about the impact that Kiva lenders have made this week:

$1,005,000.00 lent.
12,817 lenders made a loan.
17,329 gift certificates purchased.
15,002 new lenders joined.
2,874 entrepreneurs funded.
1 loan was made every 25 seconds.

AMAZING!

I also gave a certificate away on Facebook and my friend redeemed it for this loan:

Mr. Yous Ba Try, 35, is married and lives with his wife and a ten year-old child in a part of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He is the head of the family and works as a sculptor designing and making Buddha statues and historical statues from cement and will then sell up for a profit. From his business activity he can … Read More moderately make $3 a day of income. Moreover, his wife, Lay Sarorn has a business at home washing motor-bikes and vehicles and makes $3 a day of income.

Yous Ba Try would like to ask for a loan from Kiva to purchase more cement to expand his business. Half of the loan will be used to fix a roof of the building where his wife has her business.

Congratulations Kiva on your great year. To date Kiva has facilitated over $54 million in micro loans to entrepreneurs in the developing world.

For more about Kiva’s outstanding year, see the Kiva year end review blog post.

Another Gift Certificate Give Away:
I’ll be giving away another gift certificate via Twiter. I am certain that Kiva will have more loans to fund shortly.

Filed Under: Kiva, P2P Lending News Tagged With: Kiva

Free Kiva.org Gift Certificate – Merry Christmas!

December 25, 2008 By Personal Loan Portfolio 6 Comments

Last year MySpace Founder Chris DeWolfe gave away Kiva.org gift certificates to his employees as a Christmas presents. I noticed Tim Ferris gave away a gift certificate via Twitter. I decided to do the same but with Kiva.org the micro lending site gift certificates.

I am giving away one certificate via my blog with this posting, one via facebook, and one via twitter. I’ll be giving away another certificate via twitter in the next few days so follow me on twitter. I added a $20 donation to Kiva on top of the gift certificates to cover the operations for the loans, so don’t feel obligated to add the service fees that they might ask you to donate when using this certificate for the loan.

From the Kiva website:

Kiva (www.kiva.org) [is] a non-profit that allows you to lend as little as $25 to a specific low-income entrepreneur in the developing world.

You choose who to lend to – whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a … Read Moretailor in Iraq – and as they repay their loan, you get your money back. It’s a powerful and sustainable way to empower someone right now to lift themselves out of poverty.

Below is the certificate. All I ask [Read more...]

Filed Under: Kiva Tagged With: Kiva

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