I’m considering investing in microloans for semi-passive income. The two biggest hitters in this arena are Prosper and LendingClub. I’m not sure which one would be a good investment – if either. Let’s look at them for a bit, shall we?
Posts Tagged ‘prosper’
Is Prosper.com a bad investment?
In Investing, Research on September 24, 2008 at 6:26 am
Avoid This Company Like the Plague
By Chuck Saletta
August 29, 2008
Online person-to-person lending seemed like a terrific concept. People with a bit of available cash could have the opportunity to loan their money to folks who needed it. Without the expensive branches and staffs of brick-and-mortar banks, an online intermediary could keep its costs low. In theory, that would result in higher-than-bank-interest returns for the folks who could lend cash and lower-than-bank-interest costs for the people who needed to borrow it.
If it worked, it would have been a tremendous win for all involved. It’s too bad that online-lending pioneer Prosper.com botched the execution of that concept. Sure, any start-up will have growing pains. It’s how a company responds and adapts to those pains that really matters.
On that count, Prosper has earned an F.
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Well. Let’s take a look at this article and see what he’s talking about. The link is from The Motley Fool, which is a great site for learning about investments.
Passive Income
In Income on September 23, 2008 at 8:18 am
OK. So if I want to be able to do the things I want to do in life, I need to find a way to get paid while I’m doing them. There’s only two ways I see that happening: get several paying jobs that each get me to do what I want or generate some kind of passive income that pays me while I’m doing the things that I want to do. I’m probably going to have to have a bunch of these things since they won’t each pay enough to give me the income I want.
So how do I basically get paid to do nothing (after I invest in something or set it up, of course)?
Since I don’t have a local expert that can help me, I guess it’s off to the Intertubes… Read the rest of this entry »
Where am I going to invest $10,000? – Part 1
In Income on September 21, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Come October 10th, I’ll have a grand total of $10,000 in cash and savings that I can invest. I have to decide what to do with that money. Since I’m in a pretty unstable job (especially considering my wanting to leave this hole every day), I need to make sure I have money set aside to cover my bills while I look for another job when I’m home. I have about three weeks to figure it out before I reach that point.
If EVERYTHING goes south, I have about $34,000 in credit cards that I keep a zero balance on that I could live on but it would have to be a pretty big emergency to do that. I’ll keep that in mind though as I figure out what I’m going to do. I’ll have more money coming in that I can use after the 10th too. I don’t like using credit cards for anything except emergencies and to help my credit rating.
I’m not going to make a decision by the time I finish this post but it’ll get me started.
So, if I decide I’m going to invest $10,000 what should I put the money into?…
