October Lending Club Update
Lending Club update time! Lending Club calculates my returns as
Similar to last month’s NAR of 15.74%. I now have a loan that has been charged off, meaning that there’s no chance that I get my money back. The borrower declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Note: this was one of the loans that I talked about last month. Under my current Lending Club filters, I would not invest in this loan because the borrower had 3 inquiries in the last 6 months. My maximum for this category is now 1.
And for you people out there that worry that there are no consequences for defaulting on a Lending Club loan, check out this person’s change in credit score over time.
Yikes. I would like to have my money for this loan (I only received $2.32 and I expected to receive $67.46 over the life of the $50 loan), but I take no joy in seeing someone’s credit score hammered like that. It will be a long time before this borrower will be able to borrow again and they’ll probably have trouble applying for jobs with a credit score like that.
With the charge off, how do I stack up against other investors?
Still holding steady at 92%. And I still have reservations about this number.
That’s about it for this update. One final note: I did cut back on my Lending Club investments to $750/month. In the month of October, I didn’t even meet that lower goal. I only invested $600 across 8 loans. My explanation basically amounts to laziness. My Lending Club filter is an Excel file that sits on my old laptop. My new desktop has all the bells and whistles (and then some) but doesn’t have Microsoft Office, so I have to go back to my old laptop to invest in Lending Club.
Because I use my new desktop for all my other computing needs, that means I have to boot up my old laptop just to invest in Lending Club. So how I used to check out Lending Club every day or every other day, I now only check it out once a week or so. The barrier isn’t that high (all I have to do is boot up my laptop). But there definitely is a barrier now. I’ve been meaning to get Microsoft Office on my new desktop, and not meeting my Lending Club investment goals will probably be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
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There's a very easy way to get around not having MS Office. Just use Libre Office (free, open source) on your main computer. It actually works quite well and I used it for a long time until I came across a great deal for MS Office.
ReplyDeleteChargeoffs are painful! I know, having had two of them, and with those early investments, I had not yet learned the importance of "diversify."
Great returns Michael. I think number of inquiries is one of the most important filters. I invest primarily in zero inquiry loans but I will do the occasional loan with one inquiry. On Lending Club I never go more than one inquiry. IF you go to Lendstats.com and run some queries you will see an inverse relationship between number of inquiries and estimated ROI.
ReplyDeleteGharkness,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads-up on Libre Office. I think I may have found a way to get Microsoft Office very cheaply through my alma mater. If that doesn't work out I'll be sure to pick up Libre Office.