AFFJ - Taking a break from blogging.

Hello Everyone. 

As you may have guessed, I've been missing in action the last few months. Although I enjoy blogging and interacting with everyone here in the DGI investing community, I came to the conclusion that the blog simply was not the side hustle I had hoped it would become. Yes, it brought me a little ad revenue from Google Adsense, but when compared to the time I was spending, it just simply did not make much sense to continue the efforts.  After all, time is money they say!

So for my new side hustle, I have been selling on Poshmark and eBay.  I've certainly have a lot to learn but can already see the huge potential.  In roughly 2 1/2 months, I'm already averaging at least twice the amount of money I had made blogging. And it took my over 3 years to achieve the monthly ad revenue I had received before I decided to take my second hiatus (I took my first hiatus last summer after 2 years of blogging).  As with everything, I understand that it takes a little bit of time, and some growing pains along the way, to become successful.  But unlike blogging, which took me at least 6 months before I saw a single penny, I have already begun to discover and experience some success from new side hustle .  I am currently spending about the same amount of time I had previously spent blogging and quite please with what I am getting in return for my time spent.   

As for investing, I still invest in dividend stocks and still do plan to use dividends to help supplement my retirement (in about 9 1/2 years and counting). In fact, I've found myself trading more actively now than I was when I blogging.  Last month, I logged a total of 14 transactions (6 sells, and 8 buys). And in September, I logged a total of 8 transactions (4 sells and 4 buys). I know many here in the DGI community rarely sell, but with the market at near record highs, I wanted to tak some profits of the table and use the money to purchase a few stocks that I felt were good value buys. To name just a few, I have recently purchased GIS, ENB, CAH, and GE.

As for Peer-to-Peer lending, I am slowly exiting P2P.  As payment come in from both my Lending Club and Prosper accounts, I am moving that money each month into my dividend stocks account whereby I plan to invest that money and continue to grow my dividend income stream. 

As for blogging, I still come on and browse around to see what everyone is doing once in awhile. I do miss interacting with everyone. But the bulk of my time is currently spent towards growing the inventory and monthly profits from my new side hustle.  I still plan to share updates on our frugal family's journey from time to time. So for now, it is not a good bye, but a see you when I see you.

Until next time, Happy Investing...Keep growing those dividends!!

AFFJ

P2P Accounts (Update) - May 2016

On May 1st, our Lending Club account balance was at $7,412.09. We had $3,698.61 in available cash and out outstanding principal stood at $3,713.48. 

As our followers may already know, it has been more and more difficult to find and buy notes that meet our criteria.  We don't have the time to search for notes each morning as we once had so we now rely on the automatic investing tool. Unfortunately, we've just haven't had much success through automatic investing.  So in September, since we had way too much money sitting idle, we decided to open a new Loyal3 account. We will still keep our P2P accounts but our plan is to continue to move idle cash back to our bank account and invest the money into our new Loyal3 account. We obviously need to do a better to job moving this idle cash because our available cash continues to grow each and every month.

From our outstanding notes, we did receive $25.55 in interest. Unfortunately, we had several charged-off loans totaling $30.45 this past month. So this past month, we actually saw a net loss of $4.89, further validating our reason and need to find a new way to grow our money.

Once again, the automatic investing tool for Lending Club didn't manage to pick up any new notes this past month. In all, our total continuous to dwindle down and currently stands at 295 outstanding notes (66 notes have settled since our February post).  On the bright side, although our outstanding notes are not growing well, we have now seen a total of 989 notes paid in full. Oh well, it was good while it lasted. You know what they say, all good things generally come to and end at some time. :)    

As you can see our  295 active notes are part of a very conservative mix with 71% of the notes being A Rated, 26% are B Rated, and 2% are C Rated. Even though we've seen 66 notes settle since February, this mix remains identical to our mix in February. Again, I'm not too sure why it doesn't add up to 100% but I assume that these number have been rounded down as they were closer to the lower number. 

We are currently generating a Net Annualized Return of 5.35% (down .05% from February report) on our seasoned notes. 

_____________________________________________________________ 



On May 1st, our Prosper account balance was at $10,266.80 ($71 more than our February report). We had $2,127.06 in available cash, $82.72 in pending payments, and out outstanding principal stood at $8,057.03.

All in all, our Prosper account is certainly seeing better performance than our Lending Club account, however, the struggle to find additional notes and having too much idle cash also exists for our Prosper account. 

From our outstanding notes, we received $301.45 in payments from our active notes. From those payments, we received a total of $47.19 in interest and with one loan for $6.33 charged-off and $7.32 service and collection fees this past month. Surprisingly, we also managed to acquire $1,040.35 into new notes this past month. Still not happy with the amount of excess cash but it is leaps and bounds above Lending Club. We've essentially given up on Lending Club but hold some hope that our Prosper account can continue to thrive for a bit longer. 

Similar to our Lending Club notes, the our Prosper notes are invested into a similar conservative mix. As you can from the pie chart above, majority of our notes are have an A or AA rating. Although we do have a few C rated notes, they make up a very small part of our investments.  

We are currently generating an Annualized Return of 6.59% on our seasoned notes and 6.27% on all notes. 

 _______________________________________________________________

Below are the updated numbers that include both Lending Club and Prosper accounts: 

Total Value of Both P2P accounts: $17,678.89

Estimate Average Interest Earned: 5.81%

Click below to view our peer-to-peer lending accounts history

PEER-TO-PEER LENDING ACCOUNTS

________________________________________________________________  

NOTES CRITERIA:

Our family has been investing in peer-to-peer lending notes for approximately 3 years now. And because of past defaults, we have now refined our search criteria. As a result, we now take a slightly more conservative approach with the notes we invest in. Currently, we only invest in notes that fit the following initial criteria:

• Amount requested is under $6,000;
• Credit score of 700 or more; and
• Monthly payment will be less than $250.

From those we evaluate (Employment Status):

• The borrower's income (prefer > $50,000 but depends on amount requested);
• Length of employment (must be > 2 years); and
• Their occupation (certain occupations, known to be more secured, are more desirable).

We then look at (Ability To Pay):

• Their credit history;
• Revolving balance; and
• Debt to income level, etc.

We do not invest in any notes where borrow is currently delinquent, of if they have had  a public record within the last 12 months. We also do not invest in notes where the description provided is "Other." We feel that there is too much risk involve when the borrower is not willing to reveal why he/she needs the money.

P2P Accounts (Update) - FEB 2016

On February 1st, our Lending Club account balance was at $7,361.93. We had $2,353.61 in available cash and out outstanding principal stood at $5,143.71. 

As our followers may already know, it has been more and more difficult to find and buy notes that meet our criteria.  We don't have the time to search for notes each morning as we once had so we now rely on the automatic investing tool.  Unfortunately, we've just haven't had much success through automatic investing.  So in September, since we had way too much money sitting idle, we decided to open a new Loyal3 account. We will still keep our P2P accounts but plan to continue to move idle cash back to our bank account and invest the money into our new Loyal3 account. We obviously need to do a better to job moving this idle cash because our available cash is growing faster than we are investing money into our Loyal3 account.

From our outstanding notes, we did receive $34.33 in interest. Thankfully, there are no charged off loans this past month so the entire $17.58 was considered a net gain for this past month.

With our Lending Club on auto-pilot using the automatic investing tool, unfortunately, we didn't manage to pick up any new notes this past month. In all, our total continuous to dwindle down and currently stands at 361 outstanding notes (26 notes have settled since our December post).  On the bright side, although our outstanding notes are not growing well, we have now seen a total of 922 notes paid in full.     

As you can see our  361 active notes are part of a very conservative mix with 71% of the notes being A Rated, 26% are B Rated, and 2% are C Rated.  We do not own any notes with a rating less than C. I'm not too sure why it doesn't add up to 100% but I assume that these number have been rounded down as they were closer to the lower number. 

We are currently generating a Net Annualized Return of 5.40% (up .05% from December report) on our seasoned notes. 

_____________________________________________________________ 



On February 1st, our Prosper account balance was at $10,196 ($107.33 more than our December report). We had $2,323.78 in available cash and out outstanding principal stood at $7,774.87.

All in all, our Prosper account is certainly seeing better performance than our Lending Club account, however, the struggle to find additional notes and having too much idle cash also exists for our Prosper account. 

From our outstanding notes, we received $585.23 in payments from our active notes. From those payments, we received a total of $51.36 in interest and with no loans charged-off this past month. Surprisingly, we also managed to re-invest $250.00 into new notes this past month. 

Similar to our Lending Club notes, the our Prosper notes are invested into a similar conservative mix. As you can from the pie chart above, majority of our notes are have an A or AA rating. Although we do have a few C rated notes, they make up a very small part of our investments.  Unfortunately, like our Lending Club account, we have way too much idle cash.  Hopefully, that continues to change as we slowly begin to withdraw the idle cash and invest into our new Loyal 3 account.  

We are currently generating an Annualized Return of 6.81% on our seasoned notes and 6.41% on all notes. 

 _______________________________________________________________

Below are the updated numbers that include both Lending Club and Prosper accounts: 

Total Value of Both P2P accounts: $17,557.96

Estimate Average Interest Earned: 5.90%

Click below to view our peer-to-peer lending accounts history

PEER-TO-PEER LENDING ACCOUNTS

________________________________________________________________  

NOTES CRITERIA:

Our family has been investing in peer-to-peer lending notes for approximately 3 years now. And because of past defaults, we have now refined our search criteria. As a result, we now take a slightly more conservative approach with the notes we invest in. Currently, we only invest in notes that fit the following initial criteria:

• Amount requested is under $6,000;
• Credit score of 700 or more; and
• Monthly payment will be less than $250.

From those we evaluate (Employment Status):

• The borrower's income (prefer > $50,000 but depends on amount requested);
• Length of employment (must be > 2 years); and
• Their occupation (certain occupations, known to be more secured, are more desirable).

We then look at (Ability To Pay):

• Their credit history;
• Revolving balance; and
• Debt to income level, etc.

We do not invest in any notes where borrow is currently delinquent, of if they have had  a public record within the last 12 months. We also do not invest in notes where the description provided is "Other." We feel that there is too much risk involve when the borrower is not willing to reveal why he/she needs the money.

P2P Accounts (Update) - DEC 2015

On September 1st, our Lending Club account balance was at $7,558.75. We had $1950.21 in available cash and out outstanding principal stood at $5,608.54. 

As our followers may already know, it has been more and more difficult to find and buy notes that meet our criteria.  We don't have the time to search for notes each morning as we once had so we now rely on the automatic investing tool.  Unfortunately, we've just haven't had much success through automatic investing.  So in September, since we had way too much money sitting idle, we decided to open a new Loyal3 account. We will still keep our P2P accounts but plan to continue to move idle cash back to our bank account and invest the money into our new Loyal3 account. We obviously need to do a better to job moving this idle cash because our available cash is growing faster than we are investing money into our Loyal3 account.

From our outstanding notes, we did receive $43.86 in interest. But was also had $26.27 in charged off loans so we only saw a net gain $17.58 this past month.

With our Lending Club on auto-pilot using the automatic investing tool, unfortunately, we didn't manage to pick up any new notes this past month. In all, we now have a total of 387 outstanding notes (26 notes have settled since our September post).  On the bright side, although our outstanding notes are not growing well, we have now seen a total of 895 notes paid in full.     

As you can see our  387 active notes are part of a very conservative mix with 70% of the notes being A Rated, 27% are B Rated, and 1% are C Rated.  We do not own any notes with a rating less than C. I'm not too sure why it doesn't add up to 100% but I assume that these number have been rounded down as they were closer to the lower number. 

We are currently generating a Net Annualized Return of 5.35% (up .10% from September report) on our seasoned notes. 

_____________________________________________________________ 



On September 1st, our Prosper account balance was at $10,088.70 ($141.06 more than our September report). We had $1,645.28 in available cash and out outstanding principal stood at $8,443.42.

All in all, our Prosper account is certainly seeing better performance than our Lending Club account, however, the struggle to find additional notes and having too much idle cash also exists for our Prosper account. 

From our outstanding notes, we received $506.48 in payments from our active notes. From those payments, we received a total of $51.03 in interest and with no loans charged-off this past month. Surprisingly, we also managed to re-invest $650.00 into new notes this past month. For the first time in several months, we managed to invest more than the principal payments received for the month.

Similar to our Lending Club notes, the our Prosper notes are invested into a similar conservative mix. As you can from the pie chart above, majority of our notes are have an A or AA rating. Although we do have a few C rated notes, they make up a very small part of our investments.  Unfortunately, like our Lending Club account, we have way too much idle cash.  Hopefully, that continues to change as we slowly begin to withdraw the idle cash and invest into our new Loyal 3 account.  

We are currently generating an Annualized Return of 6.92% on our seasoned notes and 6.50% on all notes. 

 _______________________________________________________________

Below are the updated numbers that include both Lending Club and Prosper accounts: 

Total Value of Both P2P accounts: $17,647.45

Estimate Average Interest Earned: 6.14%

Click below to view our peer-to-peer lending accounts history

PEER-TO-PEER LENDING ACCOUNTS

________________________________________________________________  

NOTES CRITERIA:

Our family has been investing in peer-to-peer lending notes for approximately 3 years now. And because of past defaults, we have now refined our search criteria. As a result, we now take a slightly more conservative approach with the notes we invest in. Currently, we only invest in notes that fit the following initial criteria:

• Amount requested is under $6,000;
• Credit score of 700 or more; and
• Monthly payment will be less than $250.

From those we evaluate (Employment Status):

• The borrower's income (prefer > $50,000 but depends on amount requested);
• Length of employment (must be > 2 years); and
• Their occupation (certain occupations, known to be more secured, are more desirable).

We then look at (Ability To Pay):

• Their credit history;
• Revolving balance; and
• Debt to income level, etc.

We do not invest in any notes where borrow is currently delinquent, of if they have had  a public record within the last 12 months. We also do not invest in notes where the description provided is "Other." We feel that there is too much risk involve when the borrower is not willing to reveal why he/she needs the money.

P2P Accounts (Update) - SEPT 2015

On September 1st, our Lending Club account balance was at $7,436.31. We had $839.78 in available cash and out outstanding principal stood at $6,596.53. 

As our followers may already know, it has been more and more difficult to find and buy notes that meet our criteria.  Unfortunately, we don't have the time to search for notes each morning as we once had so we now rely on the automatic investing tool.  We've just haven't had much success through automatic investing.  So this past month, since we had way too much money sitting idle, we decided to open a new Loyal3 account. We will still keep our P2P accounts but plan to slowly move idle cash back to our bank account and invest the money into our new Loyal3 account. This was the reason for the -$1,987.44 net change to our account.

From our outstanding notes, we did receive $43.86 in interest. But was also had $26.27 in charged off loans so we only saw a net gain $17.58 this past month.

We did manage to pick up 5 new notes and thus invest $125 this past month. Hopefully that will help keep the account growing, albeit slowly than we would like. In all, we have a total of 413 outstanding notes and have seen a total of 846 notes paid in full.     

As you can see our  413 active notes are part of a very conservative mix with 69% of the notes being A Rated, 28% are B Rated, and 2% are C Rated.  We do not own any notes with a rating less than C. 

We are currently generating a Net Annualized Return of 5.25% on our seasoned notes. 

_____________________________________________________________ 



On September 1st, our Prosper account balance was at $9,947.64. We had $1,187.19 in available cash and out outstanding principal stood at $8,760.45.

Although our Prosper account seems to be growing a bit faster than our Lending Club account, the struggle to find additional notes and having too much idle cash also exists for our Prosper account. 

From our outstanding notes, we received $601.63 in payments from our active notes. From those payments, we received a total of $56.89 in interest. But was also had -$5.76 in charged off loans so our net gain was $51.13 this past month. We also managed to re-invest $506.00 into new notes acquired this past month.

Similar to our Lending Club notes, the our Prosper notes are invested into a similar conservative mix. As you can from the pie chart above, majority of our notes are have an A or AA rating, although we do have C rated notes, they make up a very small part of our investments.  As noted above, we unfortunately have way too much idle cash.  That will change as slowly begin to withdraw the idle cash and invest into our new Loyal 3 account.  

We are currently generating an Annualized Return of 6.98% on our seasoned notes. 

 _______________________________________________________________

Below are the updated numbers that include both Lending Club and Prosper accounts: 

Total Value of Both P2P accounts: $17,383.95

Estimate Average Interest Earned: 6.11%

Click below to view our peer-to-peer lending accounts history

PEER-TO-PEER LENDING ACCOUNTS

________________________________________________________________  

NOTES CRITERIA:

Our family has been investing in peer-to-peer lending notes for approximately 3 years now. And because of past defaults, we have now refined our search criteria. As a result, we now take a slightly more conservative approach with the notes we invest in. Currently, we only invest in notes that fit the following initial criteria:

• Amount requested is under $6,000;
• Credit score of 700 or more; and
• Monthly payment will be less than $250.

From those we evaluate (Employment Status):

• The borrower's income (prefer > $50,000 but depends on amount requested);
• Length of employment (must be > 2 years); and
• Their occupation (certain occupations, known to be more secured, are more desirable).

We then look at (Ability To Pay):

• Their credit history;
• Revolving balance; and
• Debt to income level, etc.

We do not invest in any notes where borrow is currently delinquent, of if they have had  a public record within the last 12 months. We also do not invest in notes where the description provided is "Other." We feel that there is too much risk involve when the borrower is not willing to reveal why he/she needs the money.