Prosper.com Experiment Update III

It’s been about a month and a half since my last Prosper experiment update so I thought I would share what is going on with it.

Well not much new to report, and that is good news! All 37 loans are still current, and I was able to pick up another $50 loan (Credit Rating: AA @ 11.00%) with payments from the outstanding loans. This puts me now at 38 loans with an average interest rate of 13.01% One of my loans is also being paid off, so should have enough in my account to pick up another $50 loan. I think I am going to go a little riskier this time to increase my overall loan percentage. One of the loans went late last week, but then was paid up in a few days, so I received a late payment fee of $.03. That loan was an AA Credit Rating, so I assume he just forgot to pay it. I’ll definitely take the late payment!!

One thing to remember is that if you decided to get involved in lending on Prosper, make sure as soon as your account reaches $50 (minimum loan amount) you bid on another loan as the prosper account does not pay interest on the cash balance in your account. To keep that loan interest rate up there you need to keep all your money into loans.

So far things are going well and I hope it continues this way. Only time will tell what a possible recession my do to my loans, but as I said before this was throw away money for me, as had I invested it the stock market, I would have lost it all!

Prosper.com Experiment

Well after careful review of my Prosper account, I have decided to move a head with my experiment. I currently have 15 loans outstanding with 2 late more than 4 months. Those 2 account for only 4% of my portfolio. If they were to default, I would still be up 7%, so that is still a pretty good return considering.

I have decided to add 20 more loans all at $50 each. So each month, I would receive around $50 in payments to reinvest into another loan. ($50 is the mimimum amount you can loan with Prosper) So essentially this will be a self sustaining investment where I just need to direct the monthy payments into a new loan each month. It will be interesting to see how this will increase in value over time.

I am considering all of this throw-away money since this is obviously a higher risk than just putting this money into a savings account, but if it does well it might provide some revenue generation for me in the long term. Ideally if I could get the value of the account up to $10,000 I could see possibly $500 / month in payments (assuming no defaults). I will keep you posted as to how this plays out.

Prosper.com has a promotion that if you become a new lender you will receive $25 after you fund your first loan. Sign Up Here (you can sign up through that link if you want to be a borrower as well, unfortunetly there is no bonus for being a borrower at this time )

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