Anyone Tried Prosper?

[SHELLY]

OMG, Shelly. That was a funny page of loan requests. I especially liked this one, wanting $11,000 with 20.47APR interest for 3 years. Why does he want the loan? Because he wants to get rid of his credit card, which has high interest. I thought my credit card interest of around 11% was high, but damn -- if he is willing to pay 19%, I'd hate to see what his credit card company charges.

But wait! That's not all! This same guy got approved for a $4,000 loan in April '07 so he could......wait for it.......pay off credit card debt: http://www.prosper.com/groups/member_home.aspx?screen_name=hardworkindad&display_mode=3

Don't you love the snapshot of him in the Aloha shirt holding the golf club?

There was another sad story of a guy begging for bucks to pay off the credit cards which included a photo of him with his son riding their Skidoo.

If I was going to lend these folks money I'd be looking for an ad that included a photo of the guy cutting up all his credit cards and another of him working a second job as a school night janitor.

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[spinDrAtl]

Thank you thank you. Anyone else recommend an Index?

If you opt for an index fund, say the sp500, then theoretically they should all return the same rate as the sp500 and you should go with the fund that has the lowest expenses/fees.

Most companies will not charge you any transaction fee if you are on an automatic monthly deduction from a checking account. That is usually true even if you are buying a no-load managed fund as opposed to an index fund. You can still research management fees for those funds but on no-load funds, the management fees are reflected in the share price and not deducted from your investment.

 

[egrp]

i will just put in my 2 cents quickly...

i have looked into prosper as way to invest in a vehicle that has little correlation with the overall stock mkt, in this research i found that many of the lenders where very dissapointed by proper's collection process...prosper makes money by lending but it really has little incentive to collect since it is basically a loan broker and doesnt take the credit risk...i think this is an inherrient weakness in the model.

although academically it is interesting...not for serious investors who want to place decent sums of money imho.