@Soolaimon Perhaps you might want to try Squirrel Money which is a lot less time-consuming.
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@Soolaimon Perhaps you might want to try Squirrel Money which is a lot less time-consuming.
I kinda think that the Lending Crowd platform is broken for retail users - and is leading to bad practices for same.
The speed at which the 'best' loans disappear prevents any one from actually looking at the loan details before committing to buy, and the low frequency of loans means that to invest any more than only a small amount requires quite large amounts to be invested in a smaller number of loans - clearly going against the P2P 101 best investing strategy of diversification.
I regret putting money into this platform for the above reasons, but now that I'm committed for 5 years, I'll probably submit to investing in the large B1 loans that do come up very occasionally that hang around for more than a minute or two... The issue of having to keep an amount of money sitting in the platform not earning interest, waiting for these to come up, and the need for regular small top ups to continue investing without loss is a pain.
The time it's taken me to invest $2,000 in $250 increments with Lending Crowd, is the same time it has taken me to invest in excess of $25,000 in $50-$100 increments in Harmoney...
I agree, that I tend to Buy and then take time to look at the data plus take a Screen Shot for my records, if the loan is still hanging around!!
For me I am comfortable to put more into an LC loan because over what is now 18 months they have proved ( to me anyway! ) that their system for identifying good Loan applicants is extremely robust.
Why do I say this? Well in 18 Month ZERO $$$'s Lost and currently just 3 loans in Late Payment out of 303 Active loans.....
The way I do LC is:
Get email push notification on phone
Check email. If A1 then ignore it. If small loan drop everything if I can to log in. If large loan I can take my time before logging in
Log in, LC is bookmarked on browser and password saved
Skim over loan details
Buy loan if it looks ok
This should take 1-2 mins max. Luckily I have a job in which I'm able to do this
There have been a few times I missed out on small loans because I took a few seconds to look at the loan info simply because I'm aware of not falling for the "fear or missing out" as that's when you make dumb investment decisions and end up potentially losing money. The fear of missing out is real!
The biggest issue I have with LC is that in order to spread your risk you need to diversify across at least 200 different loans. I've been investing in LC for 16 months and I've only got over 3k invested. In comparison, I have much more invested with Squirrel Money and Harmoney over the same time period.
Because the loans are pretty scarce perhaps LC need to limit the amount an investor can invest per loan so that more investors get a chance. Just saying!
I thought I posed the below in this thread (it's in the SM thread but more LC related, so reposting here). Please delete/move one or the other if you want.
I have about $50K to initially invest in the P2P lending space. From reading the threads here many people agree that LC is more secure than Harmoney (all loans have either vehicle or house as security) so I am starting off with LC. I also know about the SquirrelMoney LoanShield and most people seem to say that is "most secure"? I will probably try both LC and SM and avoid Harmoney.
My biggest question is how much out of the $50K would you recommend I invest into each loan? Obviously diversification is better, but I also don't want money sitting there doing nothing while I wait for loans to come in. From what I gather it could take a while for all the $50K to be invested. In the Harmoney thread people are investing from $100 to $400 into each loan but it looks like that would take months to be fully invested on the other 2 platforms.
Also many here seem to say that they ignore the A loans on LC (eg the current loan L00-13-072 at 8.95% which I see has been available for a day or so now (seemingly much more time that other loans) and for that interest rate, would prefer SM) - is that correct? It sounds like Bs are the sweet spot on LC?
Thanks everyone