One cool alternative investment channel is peer-to-peer loans. You can buy fractional ownership of unsecured notes, and earn a healthy return for doing so.
The most common reasons people are borrowing money are for debt consolidation, home remodeling, or to start a business.
My experiment in peer-to-peer lending began with Prosper.com, and I now have over 5 years of performance history and double-digit returns.
Know your net worth. Your net worth is the sum of all your assets (cash, savings, mutual funds, equity in your home, etc.) minus your liabilities (student loans, credit card debt, mortgages, etc.).
One tool I like to help calculate your net worth is Personal Capital. It’s free!
I began by allocating only a very small percentage of my net worth to peer-to-peer investing. Don’t make any bets you can’t afford to lose.
Know your objective. What’s the goal of your investment? A goal of accumulating wealth to retire in 30 years is very different than a goal of earning $1000 a month in positive cash flow.
My Prosper loans spin off cash every month, so I consider it a good cash flow investment.
My experiment with peer-to-peer lending at Prosper.com continues, though I’m not quite as bullish on it as I was a year ago. The platform has seen some impressive growth, both in terms of the number and volume of “originations,” and the number of lenders competing for the most attractive loans to lend on. I’m still … Read more
My experiment with peer-to-peer lending at Prosper.com continues, and it’s been another busy year.
The platform has seen some impressive growth, both in terms of the number and volume of “originations,” and the number of lenders competing for the most attractive loans to lend on.
I used Lending Robot to automatically deploy idle cash for all of 2015, which has worked out pretty well so far.
My experiment with peer-to-peer lending at Prosper.com continues, and it’s been another busy year.
The platform has seen some impressive growth, both in terms of the number and volume of “originations,” and the number of lenders competing for the most attractive loans to lend on.
As my idle cash began to grow, I sought out a smarter way to deploy it and began using Lending Robot, which has worked out pretty well so far.
In my last peer-to-peer lending update, I noted that the returns and cash flow were still strong, but that it was almost impossible to find good loans to lend on anymore.
Turns out the “professional” p2p lenders are all using automated software that snaps up the most attractive loans in seconds. My old-fashioned method of logging into the site at 9am and 5pm when new loans were released was not going to cut it.
My experiment with peer-to-peer lending at Prosper.com continues, and it’s been another busy year. The platform has seen some impressive growth, both in terms of the number and volume of “originations,” and the number of lenders competing for the most attractive loans to lend on. In fact, there’s been a huge influx of institutional money … Read more
With two years of Prosper.com lending under my belt, I wanted to take a deeper dive into the 50+ loans that have defaulted on me during that time. Prosper does NOT make it easy to access or analyze this information on an aggregate level, so it turned into a pretty tedious data-entry project. (Which I … Read more
My experiment with peer-to-peer lending at Prosper.com continues, and it’s been a busy year. New listings are posted at 9am and 5pm, and because the account spins off cash almost daily, I’m kind of addicted to log in and see which new loans I can reinvest in. Summary My loans are earning 9.88% (“seasoned”) and … Read more
I am happy to report my initial experiment with peer-to-peer lending at Prosper.com has been a success. Returns My investment has earned 11.11% so far, far greater than the <1% that money was earning in savings. There is more risk and it’s not as liquid but I’m happy with the results. Strategy As part of … Read more