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Monthly Archives: October 2006

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Still NO corporate financials from Prosper.com

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Hi All,

Just wanted to update our readers on our recent activity with prosper.com. As many of you know, we were consider putting $70,000 into the service, but decided against it. However, since many bloggers have money in prosper I wanted to write briefly and give you an update.

1) We are still active lenders in the service, and have about $3,500 in the company’s system. This is in a combination of both bids and active loans, all have an interest rate of approximately 19%.

2) Financial information regarding the company’s growth in assets under management or current numbers of borrowers has NOT been forthcoming. This is key to finding out if prosper will still be in business long enough for our loans to mature. I suspect the company has this, but may be reluctant to release it publicly for several good reasons.

3) Finally, if would be great if they advertised a bit more. For example, prosper is popular in the personal finance blog sphere, but its not clear if the borrowing public is aware of the service. From the standpoint of a lender, I’d like more borrowers to help manage my lending risk.

Thanks all and have a great Tuesday!

Best,

James

Debt, Money, Fame and the Media

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Hi All,

Its Monday and Miel and I are both busy taking are of business, so there isn’t time to get our usual wonderful blog posting together. In the meantime, there are couple of news items you might consider checking out if you’ve got some spare time.

First, the Sunday Washington Post had a great article on one journalists story of getting out of debt.

Second, I just had to pass this along to our readers. If you haven’t seen this story in the mainstream media, you should check it out. Supposedly this guy from Kazakastan named Aleksey Vayner applied for a job at an investment banking firm in New York. Apparently his application was plagiarized and the video he sent was so cheesy, its has quickly gone viral on the internet.

The story has nothing to do with personal finance, but its too good to miss. See what Gawker, The Daily Reel and Wikipedia have to say about the guy.

Enjoy reading and have a great monday.

Best,

James

Fall Harvest

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Autumn not only marks the shift to mittens and hot chai lattes, but it is also harvest season. Here are a few tips for cashing in on the harvest:

  • Find a local farmers market and head there towards the end of the day for great deals. My friend last week went to Eastern Market here in Washington and they announced free peaches and nectarines, as many as you could carry, plus apples for fifty cents a pound.
  • Whether or not you head to the market or the grocery store, buy seasonally and you are bound to save some cash. Hold off on buying oranges until their price drops at the holiday season. Apples are the way to go these days!
  • Depending on where you live, going straight to the pumpkin patch is a great way to save on you jack o’ lantern or pumpkin pie. It sure beats the price at Whole Foods and it added entertainment as well.
  • The cold weather also marks chili season! Make up a big batch of chili and you’ve got several meals made in one move. (This is James’ favorite part of fall!)

Enjoy the bounties of the harvest and stay warm. Soon we’ll be posting on weatherizing to save money, as no one is looking forward to their heating bill.

Enjoy your weekend!

Miel

More Cash with High Yield Stocks

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High yielding stocks are a bit like ice cream. Everyone secretly likes them, even growth investing enthusiasts. As part of our our efforts to pay for graduate school, we are planning on boosting our monthly income by buying some of these kinds of stocks.

In fact, we’ve drawn up a list of companies to research and possibly take a position in. Since most available search engines aren’t that great at finding this particular type of stock, I wanted to post the list for others who might be interested in a similar strategy. Before you check out the list below, I wanted to take a moment to thank our fellow blogger, My 1st Million at 33 for providing much of this information via his website.

Here’s the high yielders:

At this point, I don’t know about much of these stocks. The exception is PVX, which I’ve owned for a year and several months. I like PVX because its taken steps to increase both its yield as well as the long term viability of its underlying business.

Hope this helps!

Have a great weekend and happy surfing.

Best,

James

Hard Sell

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Okay, so our regular readers will know that we’ve been in the market for refinancing our current ARM mortgage for was feels like forever. We starting thinking about it before our wedding in July, but didn’t have time to deal then. Now we’ve seriously been in the market for the last two months.

We first went to several of the loan officers that we had worked with in the past, to see what they were willing to offer. We also checked out several online lenders and ended up narrowing the selection down to two local lenders. We did our math and ran the mortgage comparisons. We ended up going with the lender who was waiving all fees because it won out in the long run by a hair over the other lender.

Then we faced several discrepencies on the loan materials, and finally the lender coming back with basically a whole other package than we first started out with.

Over the weekend we started looking at online lenders again and now I’m plagued by ten calls a day from lenders who are panting over a live body.

Despite all the hassle of the process, it still pays to shop around. It might be a pain in the neck now, but it is worth it in the long run.

  • Do your homework, or they’ll stick it to you.
  • Run the calculators to double check what the best deal is (what seems like a small difference can be huge in the long run).
  • Be patient in the process and firm in standing by what your aim is.
  • Remember that you are the client in the process, paying a lot of money for what you want, not what someone else wants to sell you.
  • It’s as if mortgage sale people think that they are good enough to have you walk into the showroom wanting a VW bug and leave with a VW bug, but at the price of a Mercedes, and hope you don’t notice that you just got screwed.
  • Stick with it! (That’s what I tell myself these days anyway!)

Best,

Miel

September Goal Update

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So, now that September has come and gone, I wanted to take a quick moment to look at my goals, and see what has gone well and what hasn’t.

Just a quick recap, my goals for September were

By the 30th:
1) Pay all bills on time
2) Stick to movie budget of $90.00
3) Invest $50.00 from paycheck in stocks
4) Purchase a $50.00 savings bond from paycheck

Goals, 2, 3 and 4 were achieved. Saving the money in invest in stocks and savings bonds was relatively straightforward. Unfortunately, I missed meeting goal number 1 by a hair. Our property tax bill was due on the 16th, but I sent the payment in on the 17th, missing the deadline by a day.

Rats.

All in all though, it was a financially successful month. I have to give my wife Miel a lot of credit for encouraging me to be more economical by paying my bills promptly. It seems like a “no-brainer“, but I haven’t always done it in the past, so kudos to her!

Thanks all and have a great week!

Best,

James

The Map of The Market

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We don’t post a lot about stocks, but here’s one for all the traders out there. The U of Maryland developed a nifty way to measure market volume surrounding the trading in popular stocks. Whats interesting about this new method is that whole securities market is displayed visually using a series of blocks broken out by industry, where stocks that have greater volumes take up more space in the graph.

The great thing about the map is, its super easy to see which stocks are gaining price on heavy volume. This could be useful for momentum traders or people who want to efficiently search the market for popular issues.

Its kinda complicated to explain verbally, but once you take a look at the map, you’ll see what I mean.

Click here for the map of the stock market.

Best,

James

Housing for Couples

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Oh, the joys of house hunting! Finding the perfect place for a couple is doubly difficult, as compromise is inevitable. James & I haven’t been through the process lately, but we have had several opportunities to select housing, both renting and buying.

I passed on these tips to friends moving into the city:

1) Separately write down the top five things each person is looking at in a place, in order of importance. (i.e. location, price, sunny, washer/dryer, etc.)
2) Compare what things each person can and can’t live without to see what rates the highest.
3) Work the market to see what comes up that suits your needs.

You might be surprised at what you find:

  • I discovered that James is adamantly against basement apartments, which are plentiful in DC.
  • My friend discovered that her husband preferred greatly not to ride the bus to work.

Taking a moment to survey our needs saved us both time and found us a place that we were both satisfied with.

Happy house hunting!

Miel

Are you high class?

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When one thinks of being high class, most people immediately conjure up visions of huge mansions, jet-setting to France and drinking champagne while hobnobbing with politicians and celebrities.

Unfortunately, if you’re like me, reality tends to set in. So, instead of fantasizing about living in a big mansion, you’ll probably want a more reasonable comparison to see where you stand in Americas class hierarchy. Well, I came across a great little feature in the New York Times that lets you do just that.

If you have a few spare minutes, feel free to check out How Class Works.

Otherwise, enjoy your Saturday!

Best,

James

 

James’ Grade for Ric Edelman: B+

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So, its time to go back to James’ regular pontifications about personal finance gurus. Todays guru is Ric Edelman. Ric is the Chairman of Edelman Financial Services, which is a one stop center for financial advice and mortgage products. Ric has gotten a lot of press, has published four books on personal finance and you can find his stuff in just about every bookstore.

I’m giving Ric a solid B+. I’m awarding Rics grade based on the following factors. First, his advice is good. His books give the impression of being thoughtful, practical and they speak with the voice of experience. Specifically, if you are a beginner I recommend his book “Ordinary People: Extraordinary Wealth“.

Second, Ric has his own bobblehead. That means he is far cooler than you or I.

Third, I can’t give Ric the top grade because I’m a bit concerned about Ric’s decisions to avoid doing business in Montgomery County, Md. The story is that county passed a law against predatory lending back in February. In response, Ric (and a LOT of other lenders) decided to stop selling loans in Montgomery County. Specifically, Ric was mad because he felt the law was overly broad and improperly punitive towards offending businesses. Click here for the news report.

While its easy to appreciate the reasons why his outfit stopped selling loans, I’m left with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. If he isn’t making money from predatory lending, why does he care so much about the law? Sometimes finance brings out the worst in us.

So, is Ric Edelman any good? My final grade is B+

Enjoy your weekend!

Best,

James

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