Lending club

[purple monkey]

Any experience with this and returns?
I am considering it with my investments.
TIA

[catccc]

I played around with it a couple years ago.  Spent way more time trying to choose loans than it was worth.  I only invested about $2K, and had one of maybe a dozen loans default.  At the end of the day it wasn't worth it for me.

[Exflyboy]

I used Prosper and invested about $1200 25 bux at a time.. it took a few days to find investments.

I avoided any loans originating in California. This was about 3 years ago now.

I am currently running at 14.5% annual return.

So yes it works, I'm not particularly motivated to do it again, just seems like a lot of work.

[AlexK]

I put $6k into Lending Club in 2012. I have been withdrawing the cash balance as it builds and not investing in any new notes since starting. As of now the balance is $1500 with returns at 7.7% (adjusted for past due notes). I am not planning to invest in P2P lending again. I feel like the upside is capped but the downside is not. If there had been an economic downturn during this time it is quite possible the returns could have been negative. Also I don't like the tax hassles and lack of liquidity.

[Imonaboat]

I use lending club for my roth which avoids all of the tax hassles.

I used automatic investing $25 each with a filter: Grade E loans(only because they have enough volume to fill up a profile, F and G do not) from people with mortgages or owned homes with 1 or less inquiries in the last 6 months.

Once I was 90% invested I tightened the filter to 0 inquiries and income > 4k/month.

I probably spent about 4-5 hours researching, tinkering with and setting up the account, but now it takes no effort whatsoever and automatically invests as money becomes available.

I've heard it's a hassle with taxed accounts though.

[Malaysia41]

My experience : lending club the love is gone

[RWD]

I put about $7k into Prosper in 2007. I lost about $2k due to defaults. And it made my taxes more complicated... I wish I had just put the money in an index fund instead.

[cborders]

Wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole except to play around. Why would you when you can purchase a basket of junk bonds that generate better returns with a similar risk profile, lower transaction costs, better liquidity, and fewer tax headaches? Can get slightly worse returns with exponentially less risk from MLP's, muni bonds, etc. as well.