Who goes to borrow there? Single mommies that need new tires, students needing to pay off loans or need a student loan, folks going back to school, dental work and braces, bathroom remodeling, grandma’s needing a little sugar, business start up, business expansion, closing costs on homes, car and motorcycle repairs or purchases, debt consolidation to rasie credit scores and many other reasons.

How easy is it? If you’ve never ever joined a social network such as one of my favorites LinkedIn.com, Prosper.com makes it very easy and user friendly to become a borrower and/or a lender…such genious minds! Here’s how it works:

1. Let’s say you want to borrow money. Log on, set up your profile, they run and rate your credit, you enter your story and reasons why you want the loan and why you are a good candidate. Utilize photos and get “endorsements” from family and friends. Your invites are encouraged to bid even $50 towards you but it’s not required. Prosper offers them a $25 incentive if they do decide to kick in. Start your interest rate off high, as Prosper suggests, because the lending people will bid it down in many cases.

2. Like Ebay fashion, you set yourself up to have your loan bid on by anonymous people lenders. Say you start out with six days, this gives the lenders time to shop through all the profiles, scope your’s out and what I’m finding is that most of the bidding usually happens on the last day in the last couple of hours.

3. Once your total amount needed is met and pooled together by all of the people who bid on your loan, it goes through a trustee and the loan is repaid within three years by you. It shows you how much interest you will pay and what your payment will be.

Go ahead and look at the people and their credit rating and their purpose for needing money and how the people in our communities come together for people seeking funds. Great stories!

Now, as a lender, which offers great returns but not the safety of an FDIC, you can earn almost 3x’s the amount…even if you invest $50 or $25,000. YOU MAKE MORE…you are in control of who you want to bid on…break your bids up on many people…start with one and go for others. Wow! How exciting is that! Plus it’s short term…three years goes by quickly. Good things come to those who wait!

We give Prosper.com a five star over all rating. What a great concept! It’s worth it! Nothing ventured, nothing gained, even if it is the experience you walk away with! Go for it!