Bid update

So the loan I bid on a couple days ago at Prosper ended at 22.00%. That's my seventh loan at Prosper. In a month or so, I should be seeing some cash flow there. My portfolio at Prosper is looking pretty good. My previous six loans are still current. Two of them are actually paying at an accelerated rate, so I might have two paid off loans before the three-year mark. In fact, it's because of these two loans that I'm getting cash back as fast as I am. Granted, this does cut into the amount of interest I make on those loans, but it feels nice to have cash back to make extra loans.

I'm still thinking I should limit my investment in Prosper until I feel confident in their stability. I haven't been following the situation over at Lending Tree, and I haven't heard much news about Prosper doing bad. However, the initial reviews from when Prosper started does make some sense. The good news is that three years for Prosper is coming up next February. So we'll see how it all goes then. In the meantime, I'll keep reinvesting what I have back into Prosper. The high rate of return is still very appealing, especially with the state of our economy right now.

Another Prosper loan

After a couple months with no new loans at Prosper, I made a $50.00 transfer and bidded on a B-credit loan. It is currently at 32.00% with about a day and a half of bidding to go. I wanted to load up on a relatively risk-free loan, so I put a minimum rate of 19.99%. This way, I have a higher chance of getting it without diluting my average rate of return too much. If I don't get it, I'll just look for another lending opportunity.

Last I left off at Prosper I had $250.00 (now $300.00) invested with six active loans (one funded with money that was repaid). I currently have about $20.00 repaid again, so when it hits $50.00 again, I will reinvest and add another loan. I hope to continue to add more loans to increase the cash flow there. I'm still keeping a close eye on this Prosper situation. With Lending Club not accepting new lender applications, I'm wondering if Prosper can be sustainable. I've read an old article from when Prosper started that questioned whether the servicing fees are enough for Prosper to sustain themselves. Prosper started in February 13, 2006, so it's not even three years old yet. So none of the current lenders have had a loan mature yet.

I'm sure it'll be fine as it seems there is a continuous supply of loans and lenders that bid on them. As long as people continue to borrow and lend money, Prosper should be fine. And at the moment, I only have $300.00, so I'm not exactly losing my life savings if Prosper goes down.

Reviewing for Epinions

Having been on Epinions for a while and having made $25.00+ there (not a lot considering how long I've been there), I notice that you have to keep submitting reviews to keep the income rolling in. Eventually, old reviews get less productive as less consumers look up reviews to purchase an old item. So you can't exactly just write a bunch of reviews and sit back. I'm up to about 13 reviews since I've been a member.

There's also certain areas that tend to be more productive. It's actually quite obvious if you think about it. People tend to search for reviews on electronics and recreational items. So my reviews on hiking backpacks, bluetooth headsets, cellphones, cameras, etc. tend to produce more revenue. While my reviews on simpler items such as watches, starter guitars, and RAM tend to produce less. One other thing I noticed is that certain reviews are sold to other sites. When I Google my screen name, I find my Epinions review on other merchant sites. This must be Epinions trying to maximize their revenue on user-produced content. This is also good for reviewers as their reviews get more views.

Anyway, if you are on Epinions, you really need to keep reviewing items. I suggest using your item for a bit before writing. And write well and organized. That way fellow reviewers will rate your review higher and it'll appear higher on Epinions searches. Some veteran Epinions reviewers have hundreds, if not thousands, of reviews to their credit. Whoa...

Cash flow update - $168.80/year

Just did a quick check on my accounts. Average passive income cash flow is now at $168.80/year, up from $143.88/year. Monthly, this is $14.07/month versus $11.99/month. Most of this increase again is from my Prosper and ING accounts. Not much increase anywhere else. I haven't actually been doing much lately in terms of trying to increase cash flow. I just wrote a new review on Epinions for a knife I recently bought at REI, but that's about it. Anyhoot, that's it. I'll try to do a bit more and write about it.

$168.80/year or $14.07/month

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.