I’ve never done peer to peer investing. How safe is it? I’ll have to consider it. Thanks for the info.

Jessica- I couldn’t find a way to to contact you, so I’ll just do it via a comment. I am the author/owner of Financial Nut, a personal finance blog that’s been around for about 8 months now.

Anyway- I noticed you have a blogroll and I was hoping you would consider adding us. If you could go check out http;//www.financialnut.com I think you would find our content useful to your readers.

Thanks for considering us! Love the blog!

Trevor–thanks for visiting!! Also, to your two comments, first, thanks for pointing out I needed to add my email. I stuffed it into the privacy policy just now without a link hoping it will dissuade spammers. Now that my site is getting a lot of traffic though, it is a good idea to have it there. Thanks again. I will look up your blog and may put it in my blogroll–I’m trying to keep that very managable (i.e. not 300 sites long) so I may rotate pages periodically. I’m going to make a note to myself to check it out in the morning and decide about adding it. I love learning about new financial blogs. Have you seen the wisebread top 200 financial blogs list? It’s got some real gems (including yours truly sliding in at #200, but I was glad to make the list).

As for your question about peer to peer lending. I’m not sure how safe it is. It’s lending. It’s not FDIC insured or anything. It’s pretty much the same as loaning your buddy $20 for drinks at the pub on friday night. Will he pay you back? Depends on your buddy, so choose your investments wisely.

In my opinion, its far better than gambling. It is unsecured debt, but most reputable peer-to-peer lending platforms have good “asset recovery teams” for when loans go into default. You’ll want to check the reputation of the lending platform you’re considering.
One thing that I like about Lending Club is that they’re often funding loans themselves, which indicates to me that they believe in them.

I like the peer-to-peer nature of Lending Club–I can virtually “interview” prospective borrowers, and I rarely invest more then $25 in any one loan. So if a loan goes into default, I’m only out a few bucks.

Another option is Pertuity Direct. They spread peer-to-peer lending out a bit farther, and have created “peer to peer mutual funds” You don’t have the same “peer to peer” feel, but you’re directly helping someone and reaping an interest rate that is better than your savings account at banks-r-us. I haven’t used PD yet, but I think I will in the near future (in supplement to Lending Club). They have a very savvy model, and an extraordinaily experienced team. I have faith that they’re going to make this thing sing.

Peer to Peer lending is just what it sounds like–just a small loan to another everyday average joe. Take that for exactly what it is. Loan little and often and only to borrowers whose risk leevl you’re comfortable with. You can open an account and not fund it, but you can browse notes this way. I started off with just $100 and plan to contribute another $100 a month for a while, each time spreading the amount in quarters to limit risk.

If you like peer to peer lending but you’d like to have a charitable spin on it, you can also check out Microplace which offers interest and Kiva which doesn’t. I have a small Kiva account. My kids love checking the updates from our borrower who has a shop in Peru. We don’t recieve interest on this loan–it’s a fun charitable and educational effort.