Writing for money at HubPages?

I finally got around to doing some other things besides throwing money at Prosper. I did some research when I started this blog and I made some notes of some sites I wanted to get into to see what would happen. One of them was HubPages. It's pretty much a site where you write articles and post them, similar to Helium.com and Associated Content. I haven't checked out Helium and Associated Content beyond a preliminary assessment, but HubPages is cool in that you can add in your Google AdSense, Ebay affiliate, Amazon affiliate, and Kontera accounts. So there's a lot of potential for revenue sharing if you can drive the traffic to your site.

I think this would be more productive than Epinions, as Epinions is all about reviews, and reviews eventually become obsolete. Articles about how-tos or opinions have a longer shelf life and has the potential to be linked by people who like the content. So let's see how it goes. I pulled one of my credit tips from a post here and made a "hub". Go check it out!

Oh, if you haven't noticed already, I added a Digg! button to my blogs. I found a great tutorial how to do this, so for the link go to the links section at my personal blog.

Compounding interest, here I come!

I logged into my Prosper account this morning and saw that my cash balance has finally surpassed the $50 minimum bid mark at $51.34. It took a bit, but I finally received enough in repayments to bid out for a new loan without adding more money from my checking account. So right away I searched for some loans that fits my criteria.

I found a couple but eventually decided on a business that needed $6,500.00 to change all their warehouse light bulbs to fluorescent fixtures. Their old fixtures were 400watt bulbs, so they foresee at least a savings of $2,000.00 in their electricity bills. His DTI was average at 34%, and his income looked sufficient enough to support the loan. He was also at a C credit grade, so everything seemed fine. What was icing was that the loan was 3 hours from ending and it was still at 35%. I bidded a minimum of 21.99% to be conservative and was rewarded in the end. The loan ended at 25.00%, which should bump up my portfolio's average of 21.xx%. Pretty exciting.

So once this loan is approved by Prosper, I'll have 6 loans with a total original principal loaned out at $300.00. My personal investment, $250.00. Current value of portfolio is at $268+. I'm hoping to add some more funds in there to fund more loans and increase this area of investment. But I'm pretty satisfied at how fast I was able to fund a loan from repayments (It helped that one of the loans is paying faster than the 3-year plan). I should be able to fund another one soon too as this most recent borrower is looking to pay back the loan early as well.

Nothing much happening in the other areas. ING is growing slowly but steadily. Market's pretty rough right now, so nothing happening with Sharebuilder. Just the regular investment amounts.

Another Great Blog

So I was doing my daily reading and I found a pretty nice blog that detailed a man's 20-year battle with $35,000 debt. He has since paid it all off and the only debt he has left is his mortgage. It looks like a very decent blog with a lot of interesting topics and links. He definitely has a lot of stories to tell. Sure, everyone has stories, but having the time to write it down is different. I hope to put some of mine on here when I have more time as well.

I just came back from vacation, and boy did I spend quite a bit. I was reviewing my finances and I noticed a large jump in expenses. I was quite annoyed for a bit since that with my vacation added up to a large draw on my funds. But after doing some research, the expenses were things I couldn't have prevented or I had already accounted for. This is where having an emergency fund/extra cash tucked away is a great idea. I spent $200+ on new tires, when my front passenger tire went flat. I spent another $200 on a Nintendo Wii (haha, I'll admit this was a splurge, but I had $125 in Best Buy cash, so this hit could've been worse). I also have some extra fees from signing up for the gym, but this monthly expense is still lower than my kung fu class which I quit a couple months ago.

In any case, I was prepared for this spike in my monthly expenses and will spend the next few months building up my emergency fund again. I have avoided tapping into my cash at my ING accounts, so this situation played out nicely. I just have to spend less the next couple weeks (I've been cooking/preparing my own lunches to avoid spending during the week) and then work at saving again.

Prosper update

Just peeked into my Prosper account. Cash balance is approaching the $50 minimum much faster than I thought. I would probably be able to bid on a loan next month with cash that has been repaid from loans I made. This would mark my first loan made with repaid cash, initiating the compounding interest part of my Prosper plan. This is pretty exciting. I'll probably throw in another $50 after I get back from my vacation to speed things along, but with my 5 current loans, I'm getting a repayment every week or so.

Of all my little projects, this one seems to be moving the fastest. I haven't done other ambitious projects, but it's nice to see returns coming in. The loans I'm picking seem to be proving themselves. No one is defaulting, so that's good. I seem to be making good choices. Let's hope that there will continue to be good ones as I get more and more loans.

Keep track of finances with Quicken Online

So after having my laptop die and losing access to my finances on Microsoft Money, I decided I need a more accessible financial tracking system. I googled Money online and was directed to their MSN Money site - just a bunch of financial articles. I knew Intuit provides financial tracking via Quicken, so I search for Quicken Online. Voila! I find a beautiful online site where you can track most of your financial accounts - exactly what I need. So I sign up at $2.99 a month; not a bad deal when you consider Microsoft Money is $49.99. So I pay about $36/year. I like the peace of mind that I can access my finances even if my computer is down. I also love that I can access my finances on any internet-connected computer. Love it. So I'm in the process of transferring all my info over so I can take advantage of this new service. I have most of my things on there now, even things I couldn't sync with before with Microsoft Money.

In other news, my bid for that high interest loan I wrote about wound up losing. But it was for the better. The HR (high-risk) loan wound up at below 20% - a rate I'm not comfortable with for that risky a loan. So I bid on another loan for this guy that's funding his restaurant with personal loans. It was E credit, but Prosper wouldn't allow him to put his business credentials into consideration. Prosper is pretty strict like that, but that's good when looking at other loans. So I bid a minimum rate of 20.99% and I wound up winning $50.00 of the loan at 24.89%. So I'm hoping I made a good decision again and that I just added another $0.50 or so to my monthly cash flow for the next 36 months.

My other four loans are still current, so it's all looking good right now. I'm thinking in another few months, my cash balance from repayments would be over $50, and I can reinvest without putting more money in. Right now I have $250.00 in the Prosper system, but I plan on putting more in until the repayments allow me to bid on a loan every month or so. Even then, I might still keep putting money in so I can continue to increase my cash flow and take advantage of compounding interest.

Got my stimulus payment!

I got a call from my landlord last night telling me that my stimulus payment from the IRS arrived. So that $600 is here now. I remember saying something along the lines of adding to my Propser.com account to increase my investment income. I just can't remember if I said $50 or $100. My current cash balance in the account is $32 and change, so I think I'll just throw another $50.00 in there for now. Once my cash balance hits $50, I will reinvest that as well. So hoping to have a total of six loans soon. The more loans I have, the higher the portfolio income.

The only hard thing is trying to pick a loan with a high rate with minimal risk of default. I'm a bit impatient with things like this, so my search criteria is usually loans that are already funded with time remaining. I look between credit grades A-C and I read into what they are borrowing for. I check out their Prosper profile too to see what their DTI and other finances look like. It's a bit of work, so I'm off to do that now. And because I have the Proper ad on my Facebook profile, my transfer will be instant. Nice!

FeedBurner

I added FeedBurner support to my two main blogs. Taking something from the website I discussed yesterday, I decided to add a way for people to easily come back to this blog. Another way for me to hopefully increase traffic here. I went with FeedBurner, because it seems I can track the subscriptions and visits better. Not sure how to do that with Blogger. Google owns FeedBurner anyway, so it's not like I'm going with a competitor. So anyway, if you look to the right, you will now see a link to subscribe. So for my one reader out there, subscribe if you wish.