I’m not much of a blog-reader myself, though I’ve been trying to get into the habit of it for work purposes (gotta keep an eye out for competition!). One that I’ve started reading pretty often is Lazy Man & Money. Like the author, I’m lazy. And I like money. Today he was talking about something I hadn’t heard of: Prosper. The site (and concept behind it) is really interesting to me, because I proposed the exact same thing to my accountant dad as a business idea almost three years ago (I don’t know how long they’ve been around). His response was, “Nah, that would never work.”

I’m glad to see that someone thought it would work. The interface is pretty clunky, and they were asking me for bank account details before they even really told me how the site works (which has got to turn a lot of people off…). I filled everything in just to see what kind of interest rates I might expect… they gave me a B grade, which isn’t so bad. Most of my credit card debt is sitting at a fixed 9.9% from a balance transfer, so I wouldn’t be doing any better by using their estimated 12-13% for a small loan. I’ve still got around $2000 on an 18% card, though, but I’m not entirely sure I want to bother with setting up yet another “credit” source to pay it off (especially since I’m planning on having it paid down in a few months anyway).

It’s a cool idea, though. I remember seeing something awhile back where individuals could fund small business loans to third-world entrepreneurs (where $250 might be enough to start a business). Prosper strikes me as the free-market, 1st-world version of that. The thing seems most useful for small amounts, though (like: “I need $500 to fix my car.”). I wonder if anyone is using it for small business loans, or if that would need an entirely different setup.