"Borrow Money At Better Interest Rates"

While this blog is focused on encouraging people to loan money to real, live human beings in order to:

*be of help to your fellow humans &

*achieve a respectable return,

this post is to remind you that if you need to borrow money, you're probably better off appealing to real people instead of corporations.  This is especially true if your credit is in the range of pretty good to great, though my guess is that if you are willing how to learn the skill of choosing your words to appeal to your audience, you can get a good rate even if you don't have great credit.  By the way, when I say "choosing your words" I don't mean that you should say something untrue.  If you are willing to do the work it takes to learn how to speak to the people you want to reach, you will likely be rewarded with a lower interest rate.

Because Prosper.com uses a bidding process to both fund your loan to 100% within a certain time frame and then lower the rate as more people bid with lower acceptable minimums, if you get more lenders involved in the process it's very highly likely that your rate will go down.  Another factor in lowering your rate is the amount you are borrowing.  When the minimum bid allowed is $25, it's obviously easier to fund a loan for $2000 than it is to fund a loan for $13,000.  It stands to reason that if you know some people who might not loan you $1000 each, you can probably easily get them to join Prosper.com and be part of the group who loans you mostly $25 or $50 or $100 each.  Many people feel much more comfortable because there is a legal contract.

While I have only participated as a lender on Prosper.com and Kiva.org and have not been a borrower on these sites, I think you'll agree that the advice I've given sounds logical if your goal is to lower your interest rate.  As I gain experience with Prosper I will be able to give concrete examples of what I am talking about here.  For now, you can click on the title of this post to read more about borrowing money at Prosper.  You can also contact me if you would like to pay me to help you get better results when using Prosper as a borrower.

"We Let You Loan to Low Income Entrepreneurs"

 Please remember that I am just a person who has found a way to do some good AND make an interest rate on my money that I like.  I started with Kiva.org which you can visit by clicking on the title of this post.  I then added Prosper.com.  Click here to view my article titled, "Borrow Money Or Refinance Online From Real People For Better Interest Rates."  Below is some information I copied and pasted from Kiva's "About" page:

Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.
Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.

The people you see on Kiva's site are real individuals. When you browse entrepreneurs' profiles on Kiva, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else.

Kiva partners with existing microfinance institutions. In doing so, we gain access to entrepreneurs from communities world-wide. Our partners are experts in choosing qualified entrepreneurs. That said, they are usually short on funds. Through Kiva, our partners upload their entrepreneur profiles directly to the site so you can lend to them. When you do, not only do you get a unique experience connecting to a specific entrepreneur on the other side of the planet, but our microfinance partners can do more of what they do, more efficiently.

Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle, and what effect it has on the people and institutions lending it, borrowing it, and managing it along the way. To do this, we are using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Kiva creates an interpersonal connection at low costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery.