I've long wondered if its truly possible to invest my money, when I originally have no more than $25 to invest. Yeah, there are platforms and online accounts that allow you to invest with little to begin with. There may be mutual funds with relatively low startup costs, but most of those also charge you a trade commission, or a monthly fee if you are under a certain balance. Well, it's now the 21st century and technology has allowed innovating companies to create processes for the average Joe to invest with little to start with! I'm going to show you how to invest with little money to begin with, through a company called Prosper.com.
What Is Prosper.com?
Prosper.com is what is called a “peer to peer” lending platform. Think
If I were an investor on prosper.com and I chose to invest $100 in John's loan, my $100 would be returned to me over 36 monthly payments equaling up to the full amount I originally invested, plus 20.99% per year on top of that. Not bad!
==> Set up your prosper.com investment account for FREE!
An Investment That Creates A “Snowball Effect”
Can you imagine how this can build up over 5, 10, or even 30 years?! It's building up a stream of passive income in and of itself! It's what I like to refer to as a “Snowball Effect.” What started out so small, grows and grows until its big enough to provide you a monthly paycheck! When is the best time to plant a tree? 30 years ago. When is the next best time? NOW!
Auto Invest With Prosper
Not many lending or even investing platforms allow you to set up your investments on automatic. If they do, you normally have to have a minimum of $2,500. When I began investing with prosper, I was poor and didn't have hardly any discretionary income, but I was able to scrape up $25. The auto invest feature of prosper is unique in that it allows you to select from one of three different risk tolerances. For sake of explaining how this works, basically you can choose from conservative, a moderate mix, and aggressive notes to invest in. The conservative being borrowers with great credit history and financial strength, and the aggressive being borrowers with less than average credit and financial strength (don't be too scared though, the average credit score of borrowers on prosper is around 720 last time I checked. Not bad).
Based on your preferred risk tolerance, you can select the type of notes you would like to invest in, and when you have enough money in your prosper cash account, prosper will select notes that fall into that category and invest in them automatically for you! Awesome! SET IT AND FORGET IT!
So… When Do I Start Getting My Money Back?
One thing I wish they explained better when I was starting up with Prosper.com was when I start seeing my return of my investments. If I'm lending $25, and they are paying that back to me over 36 months, do I get my money back plus interest at the end of the term? Or do I start seeing monthly deposits into my account? Well, I'm happy to tell you it's the latter of the two. Within 30-45 days after the note was effective, you will begin receiving small deposits of your principle investment amount plus interest back into your prosper cash account. You can choose to take this money for yourself, or you can have it added back to the auto investments you have automated already. Keep in mind however that when you begin to invest, you agree to have your initial investment paid back to you plus interest in 36-60 months (based on the terms of the loan you invest in).
My advice, is set it and forget it for a few years. A while down the road
you'll be surprised at how much money you have coming in every couple days from different loans you've invested in, and what started out as $25 is now turned into $50, or $100, or $200, etc! AMAZING! So how do you turn your $100 into $200, then $400? By investing with prosper.com!
Are There Any Fees?
Prosper has made a strong effort to make their investing platform as simple and easy as possible. The have no up front fees, or minimum balance requirements (except for the minimum investment amount of $25). The only fee they charge is by keeping 1% if the investment return. So if your loan's interest rate is 20.99%, your net return would be 19.99%. I think I can live with that.
Overall, I'd give it a 10/10
Should you invest with prosper.com? My advice is ABSOLUTLEY! Now I'm not saying this be your only form of investments or passive income, but I think it is definitely a revolutionary way to allow the average consumer get a piece of the action! Banks used to be the only ones taking advantage of the interest rate and returns on loans they give out, not anymore! Still not convinced? Check out some lending platforms similar to prosper to compare, I'd suggest looking at lendingclub.com. Although a great company and been around a bit longer, I'm positive you'll come back here to join me and millions of others and invest with Prosper.com.
Looking to diversify your investments even more? Let me show you what else i'm doing to create multiple streams of passive income (aside from investing in loans at Prosper.com). See more here.
Please, leave your comments and questions below. I want to hear your thoughts and opinions. Happy investing!
Great review for prosper!
I have heard of a few platforms like this but never did much research into them. This review does a good job of covering what its about and how it works. It definitely has my interest now.
I have always been one for investing or the way I like to think of it is making my money work for me. Im always looking for new ways to invest and where I can get the best kind of returns. I will for sure be checking out prosper now. Just curious what the average return rate is with prosper?
Cheers
On average its about 7.41%. But it all depends on the types of loans you invest in. I personally invest in a bit riskier loans and as of right now my rate of return thus far is over 13%. The great thing about it is you can diversify to reduce your risk. Thanks for reading!
I am a beginner and I would like to try Prosper for a while but I have a question.
In your experience are there any chances to lose your initial investment?
If yes, how can you anticipate a risky investment?
My questions may sound stupid but I do not know how these sites work.
Not a stupid question at all! The short answer is yes you can lose your initial investment, just as any type of investment out there. However, its highly unlikely that that would happen.
The best way to avoid this is to simply diversify your investments into different risk tolerances. For instance, my current portfolio has a wide variety of loans ranging from people with great credit, to people with average credit, with the loans to people with average credit are more likely that they might miss a payment, and the loans with great credit are less likely to miss a payment.
Prosper.com also does their due diligence on who they lend to, so that minimizes the risk to the investors as well. The average credit score of all loans on prosper.com is somewhere in the 700’s, which is great overall.
You can start out with initial investments of just $25 per loan, so if you think about that and just invest in one loan every week or month with $25, you are diversifying how many people you are lending to, thus lowering the risk of losing your money (its unlikely that 20 people will all miss their payments), and all those small investments are scattered across many different types of risks (or many people with different credit scores).
Lastly, if you visit their website via one of the links included in the article, they also calculate how much you’re likely to average with certain loan risk tolerances (taking into account that average credit score loans may have more late or missed payments, resulting in a loss), but the overall net return is still excellent!
Great question, I hope this helps! If not, ask away and I’ll do my best to clarify. Thanks for reading!
I have never heard about Prosper and I am very happy that I found your page. I am going to invest and forget. I believe that $25 is not much and we quite often spent that money not even thinking twice. I am always thinking about investing and I believe I found the right place. thanks!!
Glad to hear! Thanks, Marta.