Three years ago, I opened an account at Prosper. I opened the account with $50 as a test of the company. I loaned $50 for 60 months at 23.96%. the borrower had requested 25,000, and I supplied $50 of that.
The borrower made timely payments for about three years, and I rolled over the $35 that had been repaid to me into a 36 month loan at 16.90%.
Both borrowers have since defaulted. I wound up getting $20.12 of my original $50 investment back. In other words, I lost 59% of my investment.
Then I ran across this article about how the big banks have taken over peer to peer lending.
I have decided that I do better in the casino than I do investing. I played in the stock market, and lost more than half of my money when the market crashed in 2008.
I tried peer to peer, where I lost 60% of my money.
I tried real estate when I bought a house in 2007, only to see it lose half its value two years later.
I am actually on the plus side from playing Craps in the casino.