Click here to listen to my (1st) audio on Lending Club
I just talked with Rob (@robgarciasj) from the Lending Club. Let me tell you, it is a BRILLIANT program. He was generous enough to walk me through the whole program from Borrowing money to Investing money to becoming an Investor. He also talked to me about finding investors to fund a loan. It is great, great, great!
Okay, so here is my spiel: I am looking to take out a $5,000 personal loan for debt consolidation for four of my high interest rate credit cards, store cards. I decided to compare the Lending Club with my credit union for this purpose. Lending Club was able to get me a rate 2% lower than my credit union! I thought beating a credit union’s rate for a loan would be tough. Wrong.
Let me tell you how my experience went with Lending Club – easy! You simply type in your borrower’s information – the normal name, address, employer, yada yada yada. Within seconds – seconds – you get a layout of what how much you are qualified for, your payments, your origination fee, your APR, etc… In my experience, it is the fastest approval system I know of that can lay the terms out for you like that. By the Way, I was approved for 11.14% – not the greatest, but that is not lending club’s fault, but mine for my dorky credit history.
Then you have the option to list the loan – make it go live – requesting investor(s) to fund your loan. Your credit history is available to them on your loan page – how long you’ve been at your job, how long you’ve had established credit, last time you were delinquent – Oh ya, and you debt-to-income ratio, too! That was kind of cool. When listing your loan, although optional, you also put down a few sentences on why you would be a good candidate for that loan.
So, here it is: the loan went live this morning. Now its my turn to persuade investors. This is where it is cool to be an investor.
If you invest in my loan, you will make an 11.14% return on your money. And you can chose to invest in all or part of the loan request – it’s up to you. It reminds me of getting a CD, but with a much HIGHER return. In fact, I don’t know anyone that would have such a great return rate for this type of investment.
(Click the link, If you’d like to learn more about how to invest money at Lending Club. If you’d like to invest in funding my loan you can find me under – Money Funk Debt Consolidation | Member Loan#: 469546)
This is where I come in with the power of persuasion: Love me, Invest in my Loan! (haha).
I am hoping the power of social media and you will be my friend(s).
Invest my loan or help get the word out, Facebook it, ReTweet it:
RT @moneyfunk Looking for investors who want a high return rate on their money! http://tinyurl.com/yhv36bd Please RT
or
RT @moneyfunk Help Money Funk fund her loan! http://tinyurl.com/yhv36bd Please RT
As I see it – it is a win-win situation. I need a loan for my dorky debt so I can PIF my cards and destroy them. All the while, you (the investor) wants to earn a high return rate on your money.
I want to thank Matt Jabs (@MattJabs) at Debt Free Adventure for his positive feedback about Peer-to-Peer Lending with Lending Club. And Rob from Lending Club for taking me through the whole process – it is a fascinating program. Then Brad (@enemyofdebt) at Enemy of Debt for making me really realize that that I don’t want credit cards anymore – I just want to obliterate them!
Also, last – this is my first audio presentation to you. Hi! Thank you for listening or reading my home endorsement and visiting my site. I had a lot of fun with this. And no gimmics, I think Lending Club is really cool as a borrow or an investor.
To find out more information:
Borrowers:  |
Investors:  |
Since I know where to find you http://www.moneyfunk.net and @moneyfunk I figured I help out. I won a Lending Club give away in November and I’ve had $50 sitting in my account waiting for the right place to use it. I can’t think of a better way to invest it than to help a follow PF blogger who’s busting her A$$ to get out of debt.
Hope you get funded. I love the call to action on Twitter too. Of course I RT’d it this morning.
Jeff
Jeff, thank you! But that just means I may be closer to $0 and harder for you to catch up. 😉
Thank you much! It is currently 20% invested at this moment. And I am hoping the viral marketing is of some influence.
Lending Club seems like a safer bet than Prosper. With Prosper, they recommend an APR for you to start your listing at but you can go higher or lower. Then, depending on how many bids you get your loan can go lower depending on how people bid. I was able to get a loan lower than my original APR, but I kind of like how Lending Club gives you the set APR from the get go.
I have not tried Prosper, but LC is pretty neat. I am no longer apprehensive about dealing with LC.
That is an interesting concept with Prosper. Thanks for letting me know how it works.
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Hi Money Funk – Has anybody ever told you, you have a very sexy voice? You should try being a radio talk show host and do these audio clips more often! lol.
Regarding Peer to Peer, I’m gonna wait a couple more years to see what the fall outs are. I have to feel comfortable investing at least $1,000 in it, or else what’s the point? 10% on $300 bucks is still only $30 bucks a yr.
Best of luck with Lending Club!
I completely agree with Financial Samurai on the voice, awesome! Don’t worry Mr. MoneyFunk, The Samurai and I are both married (to other people 🙂 )
LOL, oh man, maybe I overstepped my bounds since she ain’t replying to us! Ok, sorry Money Funk! I used the wrong adjective. I should have said your voice is like smooth jazz! That’s an appropriate description!
LOL. you comments made me laugh. Thank you for the compliment.
I agree Financial Samurai, about investing a higher amount. In Jeff’s case, he had a LCGC lying around to be put to good use. 🙂
“This is Christine, signing out from 94.7 Smooth Jazz radio. Come back tomorrow to join us…” 😉
BTW, just commented on your response on my site. If you want to borrow money, shoot me an e-mail. I will lend you the entire $5,000 for 10%!
Obliterate those credit cards!
Oh, wow… let me go check out your comment. Love the words “obliterate’ and ‘erradicate’. Sweet, sweet words in my view.
I checked out Lending Club but I don’t think I’d be eligible to use it. Just going to continue digging out from this debt of ours. We’ve paid off 4 credit cards this year! Our goal is to peg off at least 3 more (much higher balances than the previous 4) in 2010! Good luck!
Hi Beckey, this comment seemed to have slipped by me. Please forgive me.
If you read the Borrow’s section you can get general info to see if you would qualify. If you are still not sure… you can ‘apply’ and it will tell you within seconds if you don’t qualify or if you DO qualify. If you do qualify then the terms, you may accept, are right there for you to consider.
But even if you don’t try with LC… keep going at your goal of digging out of debt. Trust me, in the beginning there would have been no bank to trust me. But thru time, diligence, and hard work I have maintained a good rapport with my credit score and my bank.
I wish you the best of luck at getting meeting your goals for 2010. I have a feeling that 2010 is going to prove good for those of us with a financial plan to follow. Yes, even in our economic state of despair.
Oh how I appreciate and seriously love the shout out, especially having to do with cutting up those “dorky” credit cards!
Most people think that I would be against something like this, but it is not true. This is no different than downsizing your debt which will benefit you. the fact is that you are not taking on more debt you are just consolidating it and the smart way I might add, without using debt consolidation companies. Good job!
Now I just need to work on you giving up that one last credit card for emergencies and replacing it with an E Fund!
Goof luck!
WHAT?? How did I miss the one last credit card for “emergencies”?? Hey young lady, it’s time to ditch that card!!
We all have “emergencies”, force yourself to actually work through an emergency and I promise that you will never need that card again. Mr. Murphy Emergency paid me a visit not to long ago, by not having the card I figured out how to work around and solve the problem. Just having the card is like giving yourself permission to use it. I’ll mail you some scissors.
*smack on the hand* 🙂
So then I should be funding the Bank of Christine and using my debit card as an emergency card? Hmmm….
Okay… I might be for it as I can find flexible solutions to use a debit over credit card when traveling the world (one of these days) but….
what about keeping established credit? I do intend to buy a house one of these days. So how does a No Credit Card, debt free person keep an established credit score? I don’t plan on having my car payment forever.
No scissors needed. I will cut when EF is funded.
see reply below. need your input on that – established credit.
Well, those cards are PIF’d. 😉 I will update everyone soon. On ‘holiday’ with my blog right now (sporadic posting, taking some time to enjoy the season).
BTW, I thought ‘dorky’ complimented the words ‘credit cards’. LOL.
My answer to you would probably not sit well with you a this time but give it time.
I do not worry about my credit score. In fact, I have no credit score, it is non-existent. I have not borrowed money for almost two years now and they do not have enough information to calculate a score. How do I feel about that? I am perfectly fine with it because my credit score, or lack thereof, does not matter to me because I do not plan on borrowing money ever again. YOU HAVE TO borrow money to have a score and I refuse to take part.
As far as wanting to buy a house one day. You can totally buy a house without a credit score. It’s called manual underwriting and not as many firms do it but it can be done. That is where they base your ability to pay back the mortgage on real life factors as opposed to a score. It’s the way it used to be done before the credit scoring system was put in place.
There is only one issue I have had to deal with because I didn’t have a credit card. Renting a car – and I just found another way. Keep your car rental! LOL
Again Brad beat me in on this one. At least I’m following a wonderful Dude 🙂
Yeah, the old credit score. I think you’ve been watching too much Suze Orman and her constant ranting and raving about MyFICO.
I just pulled up my score on CreditKarma 736. It’s on a fast decline since I paid off my last credit card in July. I assume that it will be zero soon enough. I’m not worried about though. Like Brad said there is always a way around it.
When I lived in China NOBODY had a credit card or a credit score. EVERYTHING was paid in cash. Kinda funny how they pretty much own the USA now too (our debt).
Good luck, we’ll be around for support when Murphy comes. I’m sure I’ll have another visit with him soon.
That’s right Jeff—who needs a credit score? Some or even most people, but not us, and not an increasing number of Americans. Cash only seems to be blowing up! Thanks to Dave Ramsey and other debt free blogs, including Jeff’s! I nominated you Jeff for best new PF blog of 2009! 🙂
Have you nominated Enemy of Debt yet Money Funk? 😉
I was surprised to see how many people DO NOT actually buy use credit cards. So tres cool. I am becoming rather convinced myself that I do not need them either. But that I DO NEED a good size emergency fund to cover potential murphys.
Nominated you too Financial Samurai and Money Funk! Can’t wait to see how this thing turns out. I doubt I am big enough to win one of these things but it sure would be fun to.
Aren’t there tons of blogs about debt out there? LOL
How did I miss these 2 comments???? Wow, thank you Brad. I have not got around to the Plutus Award nominations, but of course I will nominate you and a few others. Better get my toosh over there. Thanks!
I think it’s great that you’re looking to save money by consolidating those high interest credit cards into a lower interest loan. Keys when doing something like this are to make sure you’re not consolidating any lower interest loans in the deal, and in addition making sure that you don’t use the lower payments as an excuse to spend on other things – instead just paying down the debt faster. Sounds like you’re committed to doing that, so it should work out great.
I’ve been investing with lending club for a few months so far, and so far it has been a good experience. I’ve had no defaults and am making about 11.14% on my money so far.
Good luck with your loan!
You’re right. In the past, I have even done that… paid off the cards only to re-rack them up with debt. *shame* But, I have grown a lot since then. These cards are history! I have no need for them. It’s a solid emergency fund I need to continue building. 🙂
And I also did just that, paid off higher interest cards. Actually, two companies just raised our interest rates. and one even raised our credit limit with that interest rate as a “thank you”. LOL. Geesh.
I am definitely commited. So ready to get rid of this debt for GOOD!
And that is great about you having a good experience with investments. I hope to invest with LC in the future. Plus, I know that Financial Samurai has considered investing but is concerned with the idea.
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I’m a huge fan of Prosper for the very reason that Prosper only suggests, but doesn’t dictate your interest rate… that’s what credit card companies do and I’m kind of disappointed that Lending Club seems to be going down that credit card company path. On both of my Prosper loans, I set the maximum rate and lenders bid down my rate (they can never bid higher as your comment suggests).
I’ve heard of Prosper, but am not familiar with their practices. I am glad to have another view of P2P Lending.
So you get to dictate the rate? Kind of like Priceline with naming your own price. That is something worth looking at. I would wonder though, if you list too low of a rate that it might take you longer to become funded – is the interest comparable for investors to fund.
Thank you, Alexa. I’d be interested in comparing the two companies.
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