Getting Started

Ok so I'm always looking for ways to get out of "Corporate America". You know, the American dream...be your own boss. Now my day job is at the bank. I'm a personal banker...I do investments, loans, open checking accounts, credit cards...on and on. Of course I make alright money, but the bank makes even more. I drive 30 minutes each way five days a week to work 40 - 45 hours a week with two weeks of vacation. And "banker's hours" are not so great anymore! We're open til 6pm every weekday, and 2pm on Saturdays! That means most nights I get home around 7pm, unless I stop to run errands on the way home.



Anyway, I just wanted to fill in my background. I stumbled upon this ingenious idea...it's called "peer lending". is the only reputable site I could find for US lenders. They're calling it the "EBay of loans". Basically, people looking to borrow money for ANY reason list their request with details about why they need the money, what they're financial situation is, what interest rate they're willing to pay, etc. The site then posts all the requests along with some credit information, and lenders commence bidding on the requests. The great part is, you can lend as little as $50.





I joined July 13 and currently have won bids on two loans, at an average APR of 16.54%. The purpose of this blog is to try to give my feedback on the site and the process. So far my only concern is that it seems to take an unusually long time for funds to move from one place to the other. It takes several days to get money into the prosper account from my bank account, then once a bid is won, it can take several more days for the loan to fund as it goes through some sort of verification process. I haven't had any loan payments come due yet, so I'm not sure if those are credited quickly or not.



Having worked for banks for over ten years, it seems it shouldn't take as long as it does. An ACH can happen overnight, so I'm not sure what the holdup is. Anyway, please comment me if you have detailed questions about this process so far, and I'll be sure to update the blog periodically. Thanks for reading!