Prosper.com

[mindmaniac]

Prosper.com is the United States? first person-to-person lending system. It matches individual borrowers with individual lenders, and allows lenders to receive better interest than they could in the bank, while allowing borrowers to face lower rates than loan providers. Proper.com claims to be highly secure, and provides collections services if the borrower defaults on their loans.

Each borrower is given a credit rating based on their Experian credit report, which lenders use to determine how much they would be willing to loan money. Lenders offer to fund part or all of a borrowers loan, and the loans with the lowest rates that meet the borrower?s target loan amount will be packaged by Prosper and transferred to the borrowers account.

I haven't signed up yet, but think it might be worth a shot to put $1,000 in and see how it goes. As with any investment there will be risk but maybe it will pay off.

 

[Agentbolt]

Just make a bunch of micro loans. Loan 200 people 5 bucks. You get the same return, and if 2 or 3 people default, you're out 15 bucks.

 

[mindmaniac]

The minimum you can loan is $50

 

[BeauJangles]

There's a new thread about this every week.

 

[hellod9]

This is a great tool if you want to loan money to friends or family. Otherwise, I wouldn't use it.

 

[thepd7]

Originally posted by: BlinderBomber
There's a new thread about this every week.

yes...I believe the consensus was: be very wary.

 

[slsmnaz]

Big thread

 

[rgwalt]

Originally posted by: mindmaniac
The minimum you can loan is $50

Lets say you loan 20 people $50 and receive an APY of 5% (after fees and whatnot). At the end of the year, you will have made $50 on your $1000. If one person defaults on the $50 loan you just break even. If more than one defaults, you lose money.

Perhaps you can get a better effective APY than 5%. Now would be the time to get involved with this sort of thing, when it is still close to the ground floor and you can lock in good returns on your investment.

R

 

[DaveSimmons]

If you put the $1,000 into an INGDirect account you'll only make $41 instead of a -possible- $50-100, but it's a guaranteed $41 with 0 chance of losing money.