So you’ve run into some financial difficulties, or you would like to consolidate some of those higher interest credit cards you have, or maybe you would like to do some home renovations, pay for a students education, buy a car, start a business or anything else you could possibly think of. You go to a bank and apply for a loan, but darn…you get turned down. Hmmm maybe you decided to try another bank, maybe a credit union or two and still you get a negative response. You are about to give up because you can’t see any other options in your future. So what’s a hard working person to do?
Well, I too was in your shoes. I am a single mother with four children. I work a full time job; I am also a full time student in college working towards my bachelors’ degree. My oldest daughter has just graduated from high school and will be joining me in the pursuit of a higher education in the fall. Oh nooooo…. that’s two college educations I now need to fund. Of course, we will more than likely qualify for financial aide in the form of grants, but that comes in to play later, after you pay the tuition in full and it usually doesn’t cover all of the costs you will incur. You can’t attend unless everything is paid in full. Now what?
I went on line and did a little searching and I came across, what to me, is one of the most amazing concepts I’ve seen so far. It is called peer-to-peer lending. I found it on a site called “Prosper”. You can find it at www.prosper.com, and it has so much to offer. It’s like money lender bugis but what’s good about it is that it has low interest rates. It can definitely help you to invest on anything want without worrying on high amount of mortgage because of the high interest some lenders impose to borrowers.
You go on line and create an account. You can either be a borrower, a lender, or both.
When you apply to be a borrower, you answer some basic questions. Your name, address, phone number, social security number (it’s secure), bank account information, and the loan amount requested. They also want to know what your monthly expenses are as well as your credit grade. Here’s the best part. You choose the highest interest rate that you are willing to pay. You do have to be reasonable of course. You can’t get carried away and request a 4% interest rate when you have not so great credit. Plus, you have to take into consideration the market conditions. But here’s the kicker. When you submit your application lenders can bid on your loan. They can bid any amount they would like to towards your loan. This bidding continues until your loan is fully funded. Once fully funded you have the option of accepting it as is with the interest rate you set, or you may let it ride and hope that more lenders bid therefore reducing your interest rate. You have seven days for this loan to be funded and the bidding wars to wage themselves. At the end of this time your loan will pay out to your financial institution. If it has not reached full funding, the request is canceled and you may resubmit with a lower loan amount or a higher interest rate. Also, you may not want to start with an interest rate that is too low because you won’t get as many lenders bidding. Even if you start out with a high interest rate, more than likely it will be bid down. If interested to learn more about the bidding process, you can check out these philgeps opportunities that can prove informational to you in this regard.
Sometimes the lenders bidding may have questions for the borrower which are posted for others to see as well. Usually, it would be something along the lines of “why does it show you have a delinquency, what happened”, or “what equipment for your business will you be purchasing”, or “what are the current interest rates on the credit cards you will be paying off”. These questions just help the lenders to make a more educated decision about if they want to take the risk and fund your loan or not.
You can also sign up to be a lender. Now you may be wondering to yourself, “If I don’t have a lot of money, how on earth can I be a lender”. You really don’t need to be a millionaire or have a lot of money to get started. All it takes is $50.00. That is the smallest amount that you can submit to any loan. You get to choose which loan requests you would like to bid on. You can also look at their profiles and see what their debt to income ratio is, what monthly expenses they have, what type of credit grade they are (if they are high or low risk candidates), you can also read about what they are going to use the loan for. After taking all of this information into consideration, you weigh in all the facts and risks, and than you decide who your money will go to. There is also a handy calculator that will calculate your returns on this investment. For example, say you place a bid for $50.00 on a loan request of $15,000 at an interest rate of 27.08% you should expect a return of about 15.29% on your money. Now, imagine if you have several $50.00 bids on several different loans at different interest rates. You can create a steady flow from interest alone.
Each borrower is aloud to request up to two loans (one at a time) totaling $25,000. For example, you can request a loan for $5,000 and after about six months of steady payments you can go back and request another loan for $20,000. Of course, once these are both paid in full you are free to request more loans if you wanted to. The loans are paid back in a three year time frame. There is no prepayment penalty and you can always pay more than the required amount.
I find this to be a rather interesting concept. I would much rather pay regular people than to pay the financial institutions who deny people when they need it the most. Also, helping people to get on better financial ground, or back on their feet, or out of high interest, is a great feeling. I don’t think we do enough for each other as a community these days.
I hope that I have created a spark of interest or perhaps a light at the end of the tunnel for those of you in need. I posted my loan request yesterday and within four hours I was completely funded. Now I am just watching the bidding wars. I posted my application with an interest rate at 20.33% and over night it has gone down to 15.70%. That may not seem like a lot, but in the world of interest it makes a huge difference. That is already lower than most credit cards. I am going to let the bidding continue until the loan closes. If I’m lucky I can get it for less than 10%. I am also in the process of becoming a lender. I think it has great potential.