# Lending Club Experiences **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 24, 2009, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989 "2009-10-24T19:00:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/121 "2010-12-04T06:22:10Z")
Crossed a milestone today. As of this afternoon, I have received one payment from each of my 16 loan notes, for a total of $30.91, $5.01 of which is interest. This is almost 10 times more than the 53 cents I would have yielded from my savings account on the same amount. I’m assessing my next move. I was going to wait until early next year to increase my investment, but I may be ready to throw another $1000 in now, perhaps a little more. Still just dipping my toe in, but somewhat less timidly I guess. ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/122 "2010-12-11T06:13:02Z")
I am finally cralwing back positive after $75 in defaults on two loans previosly mentioned, at the moment, everything is looking good, 32 all in good standing 1 in funding. Only one of mind paid off early so far. 75% of my portfolio is also now in Ax and Bx loans. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/123 "2010-12-11T18:32:25Z")
I’m still positive (7% annual return); my one bad loan has been formally charged off. 27 active loans (3 of which are 50 dollar loans) so I’m just about at the point where each month I can fund a new loan just on the income stream. I am not adding a lot of new money right now, just 10-20 bucks here or there. One silly goal: I want to have a payment coming due every day or two. I now only have one “gap” during the month (4 days between due payments). Silly, I know, but maybe I’ll be able to close that in January. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2010, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/124 "2010-12-11T21:03:06Z")
I’m up to $860 in interest so far. I’m happy with that. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/125 "2010-12-20T02:11:36Z")
How are you folks tracking your investments, in whatever software you’re using? This blog ([http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2010/02/18/how-to-account-for-lending-club-defaults-in-quicken/](http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2010/02/18/how-to-account-for-lending-club-defaults-in-quicken/)) had a good suggestion on another page: just record one purchase (for all new notes), one sale (for all principal received), and one income (for interest received) each month, so that’s what I’ve been doing. Not sure I agree with what he says he’s doing for the default; that MIGHT be something that should be charged off tax-wise. Current account status: 27 active notes. 2 fully paid, 1 charged off. I’ve got enough cash to invest in another note today, and probably one more just after Christmas. So far I’ve made about 54 dollars in interest, minus 21 for the defaulted loan. ---
**Author:** ![MannyL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@MannyL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MannyL)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/126 "2010-12-20T02:33:30Z")
As a borrower my experience has been good. While I could have gone to my CU for a loan and might not have paid any fees I felt that I wanted to help other financially and one way is to pay individuals rather than a faceless institution and had taken a loan from Lending Club so if any of you funded Loan : They showed me the boot so get my loot I’m paying you As a lender which I was before I became a borrower I’m at a "severe"loss I invested $25 each into three loans of of them a D grade which paid me a whopping 87 cents and then charged off. I have a B grade loan that is current and I’ve received $7.20 from it and lastly A C grade loan where I received $6.80 it’s in the grace period now with a payment that was due 12/10. I’m a little concerned but not much because I know Lending Club doesn’t always post accurately. ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2010, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/127 "2010-12-21T08:21:48Z")
I must say when I opened this thread I never expected the response and ongoing saga… 😃 Something that just struck me…I wonder how many of us are invested in the same notes. ---
**Author:** ![Enderw24](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ba9def/32.png) [@Enderw24](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enderw24)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/128 "2010-12-23T18:17:29Z")
Opened my account in October with $250. Now have ten investments ranging from A3-C1. All are current going into month two and I’ve netted a grand total of $1.89 in interest. That and, well that, will get me a cup of coffee. Woo. ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2010, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/129 "2010-12-23T23:09:49Z")
> [@Enderw24](#): > > Opened my account in October with $250. Now have ten investments ranging from A3-C1. All are current going into month two and I’ve netted a grand total of $1.89 in interest. That and, well that, will get me a cup of coffee. Woo. I talked to an aquaintance of mine that is a bank manager, he is not a big fan of peer to peer lending but he had mentioned that in general a bank averages out making about $1 per month for every $100 is has on deposit from being able to cut loans etc. so if you are getting that you arent doing much worse than the bank would off of your money. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/130 "2010-12-28T16:56:54Z")
> [@drachillix](#): > > I talked to an aquaintance of mine that is a bank manager, he is not a big fan of peer to peer lending but he had mentioned that in general a bank averages out making about $1 per month for every $100 is has on deposit from being able to cut loans etc. so if you are getting that you arent doing much worse than the bank would off of your money. 100 is 4 loans… assuming a payment of 83 cents per loan of which 26 cents is interest, that’s just over a dollar in profit. Of course as that loan ages, the profit per month drops. Say the average is 13 cents interest over the life of the loan, it’s 52 cents so less than the banks but still decent. By comparison: I just checked one of my IRAs and (among other investments) it has a 6,000 dollar cash balance. That earned 54 cents lasts month (yeah, I need to at least move a chunk of that into CDs, even at .25 percent it would be earning more!). I’m at 29 open loans right now. The only one of note is one of my first 3, which has been on a payment plan for months. As far as I can tell, that just meant slipping the payment date by 2 days each month (from the 14th to the 16th). Of interest: the past 2 months it’s had an extra payment of 2 dollars. The loan history page shows a payment of 2.82 - but the extra 2 dollars wasn’t credited to me until the 27th (the main payment was credited on the 21st). A feature that they seem to have taken off the page: a way of seeing what your total estimated monthly payment stream will be. At least I haven’t been able to find that in a few months. Now I just estimate by taking the number of loans and multiplying that by 80 cents (I count the handful of 50 dollar loans twice). ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/131 "2010-12-28T19:13:48Z")
> [@drachillix](#): > > … > > Something that just struck me…I wonder how many of us are invested in the same notes. Here’s the list of my notes (loan numbers not note IDs): anyone else got any matches? 493244 468706 469552 477000 495024 495701 461379 496528 600757 619513 619895 508282 472454 463711 472791 499557 523470 455991 455904 556885 574841 511258 541189 592359 491477 501407 481176 629957 635576 ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/132 "2010-12-29T02:02:18Z")
looks like me and you don’t match on any of them 453391 453587 454329 457637 459063 460116 461412 466817 470418 470532 472365 472645 473486 473872 474649 476976 480860 485952 488289 488478 492598 502506 511441 512106 516693 527753 541724 542296 564911 589022 596830 601194 606980 617271 619503 622296 633856 ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/133 "2010-12-29T02:07:06Z")
> [@Enderw24](#): > > Opened my account in October with $250. Now have ten investments ranging from A3-C1. All are current going into month two and I’ve netted a grand total of $1.89 in interest. That and, well that, will get me a cup of coffee. Woo. Yeah but a hell of a lot better than a typical savings account. The neat part is you roll that over into new loans and start compounding your interest. At 5-8% that does start to add up. ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2010, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/134 "2010-12-29T05:38:12Z")
Here are mine 365196 368155 380303 385291 386310 390268 411492 411492 458184 459877 460779 469943 472637 477719 485655 490731 500594 Looks like my list doesn’t match either of yours. As you see, I invested in 2 notes from the same loan. I don’t know if you can do it in the main Lending Club, but I can purchase as many notes for a single loan as are available on the trading platform. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/135 "2011-01-05T15:26:21Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > … > As you see, I invested in 2 notes from the same loan. I don’t know if you can do it in the main Lending Club, but I can purchase as many notes for a single loan as are available on the trading platform. You can, but you’ll be disproportionately hit by fees. Say you invest 3 times in a loan that pays 80 cents per month per 25 dollar investment. You’ll get 3 separate payments of 80 cents, and it’ll take a penny from each. If you invested a single time for 75 dollars, your payment would be 2.40, or 2 cents in fees (it appears to round up OR down to the nearest whole penny). So you’re better off investing it all at once vs. in dribs and drabs. As we’ve all noticed, Lending Club appears to be at least partially funding loans themselves, a lot of the time. That leads to two observations: 1. it’s a big incentive for them to be aggressive in collections actions since their money is on the line too, but 2. it suggests to me that they’re having trouble getting enough investors to fund the demand. What happens when they’ve invested all their venture capital? Won’t the demand dry up because loans aren’t getting fully funded? On a side note, I just had a third loan pay off early. Total interest on the loan was something lke 75 cents, minus about 30 cents in fees. I still made a profit and of course immediately re-invested the payback. I’ve also just sent a couple hundred dollars from a windfall, will gradually invest that over the next month. ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/136 "2011-01-05T17:05:57Z")
It occurs to me that some (most?) people, me included, don’t reinvest their earnings immediately, thereby experiencing a period of no interest being earned on the uninvested, inactive funds, which negatively impacts the amount of interest on the aggregate investment. As you only earn interest on funds that are actively invested in loans, and because you can only reinvest earnings that have reached the minimum $25 threshold, that 9.67% interest (or whatever your number is) you earn on your notes, is actually less than that. A second thought. You’re also not earning interest on funds invested during the period the loan is in a funding status, correct? ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/137 "2011-01-05T17:48:59Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > It occurs to me that some (most?) people, me included, don’t reinvest their earnings immediately, thereby experiencing a period of no interest being earned on the uninvested, inactive funds, which negatively impacts the amount of interest on the aggregate investment. As you only earn interest on funds that are actively invested in loans, and because you can only reinvest earnings that have reached the minimum $25 threshold, that 9.67% interest (or whatever your number is) you earn on your notes, is actually less than that. > > A second thought. You’re also not earning interest on funds invested during the period the loan is in a funding status, correct? Right. LC has a lot of investor money in “float” status at any given time. There’s the time from when you deposit money to when it’s disbursed to the borrower. There’s the time between when they receive payments and they credit it to your account (4 business days). There’s the time between when it’s credited, and you withdraw or re-invest it. There’s the time between when they wire money from your bank account and they credit it to your LC account (e.g. my latest transfer left my checking account yesterday and is not yet available at LC). My assumption is that these funds are held by LC in some sort of interest-bearing account at some sort of bank, so they’re getting some interest on them. Not a lot, given current short-term interest rates, but if you’re holding something like 100,000 on average and getting .25% interest, that’s still an extra few bucks a month. That income, plus the loan fees they skim off the top of the loan principal, plus the payment fees skimmed off what we investors receive, means they’ve got a guaranteed income. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2011, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/138 "2011-01-25T18:01:28Z")
Update here. Due to a recent windfall (inheritance), I transferred 200 dollars and have invested most of that (still have 50 dollars of it left to invest). That plus some money I transferred in December, leaves me with a comparatively large number of issued loans awaiting their first payment - 8 loans. I’ve been picking one or two new ones per week. Mostly Bs, with almost as many As and Cs but Bs definitely dominate. 35 loans outstanding (of which 4 are 50 dollar investments). Had another loan pay off early, recently - that makes 3. Weirdly, the first one which paid off (after having been late the first month, they paid in full the next) has another collections action against it (“contacted 3rd party or borrower’s acquaintance”) as of November - 8 months after it was paid off. Weird. Met one goal this month - a silly one, but still: I now have due dates spanning the entire month with no more than 1 day gap between them. So every day or two, there’ll be cash hitting my account. And there are enough loans now paying that I should be able to fund a new one just from the proceeds, slightly more often than once a month. No new troubled loans so far, not even the one D class loan. Of course that’s only been 9 months, but the credit score is unchanged so hopefully the borrower is stable. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/139 "2011-03-03T00:21:30Z")
Looks like they’re now offering loans of up to 35,000 (the old limit was 25K, I think). I opened my filter criteria up to include loans for that amount… and got a bunch of F-class 60 month loans. Somehow these do not tempt me. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989/140 "2011-03-18T03:01:42Z")
Any status updates from anyone? I periodically glance at the individual loans to see how their credit scores are faring… and just noticed the other day that one (an early C2 from January 2010) had the usual ups and downs… then plummeted 3 notches this month. It’s due in 10 days, we’ll see how that goes. Another early B5 from about that same time ALSO plummeted 3 notches. It just made an on-time payment, however. No other defaults so far. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lending-club-experiences/514989.md?page=8)