Moving Expenses, the heading states. A man named Kevin wants to move from Boston to New York and needs some start up cash. So I lent him $50 through Prosper.com. Here’s a link to the story I wrote about Prosper. It’s basically an online person to person auction site for unsecured loans.

Kevin has high risk credit, despite having no listed delinquencies in the past 7 years and no public records like bankruptcies. His debt to income ratio is also low. Why his credit is high risk is a mystery to me, but I’m willing to risk $50 in this grand experiment.

I chose to bid on his listing in part because of the extensive details he provided. I especially was encouraged by his statement that he was going to pay some of the loan back right away and that another lump sum was coming in the near future that could also be put towards the loan (although I bet it goes to start up costs in the Big Apple).

My potential payoff? Earning a rate of 22.75 percent interest.

I have $50 more to invest and will be looking around the site for a new prospect.

Anyone else using Prosper? What do you think of the concept?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.