"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.