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Lot of blogs offer their own created merchandise, but I am an engineer and I feel more productive advising you on risks and returns than to design your summer T. That's why I want to suggest you someone else work the I find nice and easy:  StockTwits is the largest social network for investors and traders, with over two million registered community members and millions of monthly visitors. StockTwits was founded in 2008, with a mission to connect regular investors and traders with each other so they can profit, learn, and have fun.  StockTwits is the inventor of the cashtag (e.g.   $AAPL ) and they have a small shop with interesting items. Let me you know in the comment section if you like them as well! And what about all those gains you made with P2P? Compounding is incredible but sometimes we need a pause from our FIRE lifestyle, innit? GOAT and StockX are two sneaker marketplace where you can find new and used authentic kicks. StockX deals ...

First I started to invest with Portfolio Manager; if I remember correctly I choose a Conservative profile, just to try. First year everything was great, returns were high but being already mindful of the platform default risk, I started to withdraw 100 euro every 200 euro of profits. I wanted to let the compounding do its miracle but at the same time take something back just in case. At the beginning of 2016, the first defaults started to materialise and the reporting package changed, Bondora initiated a long campaign to defend its new method of default loan accounting; I was lured into it, you have to wait the whole life of a loan to properly compare results between repaid and default loans…no? In the meantime, I saw the proportion of F and HR loans grow even if I did not change the portfolio profile: Bondora explained that if the portfolio return was lower than the target return, they were effectively taking in more risk to ‘re-align’ the portfolio. If you are familiar with the ...

"do applicants ever get rejected?"  Let me introduce you, at minute 1:03, to  Bondora (YES it is an affiliate link, YES I will get $ if you invest and you will get $ BUT I hope you will change your mind by the end of this post). I want to use this post as a cautionary tale about the risks investing in P2P lending and I will start with an analogy with the Great Financial Crisis. The above video is from the movie The Big Short and if you did not watch it, please give yourself a favour and buy the book . In normal times, banks use to take the money you deposit with them and lend to others; those loans stay on the bank balance sheet, meaning if the loan defaults the bank has a loss, therefore the bank has the incentive to give loans to entities it reputes solvable and trustable. More than a decade ago, banks started to 'package' those loans and sell them to external investors: those loans cease to be on the bank balance sheet and the bank get remunerated wi...

Viventor does not originate loans itself but is a platform, like the bigger Mintos , open to investors from all over Europe. Partner companies that list loans on Viventor consist of professionals, possessing years of experience in non-bank lending and underwriting, and having their skin completely in the game. Also, access to financing for eligible borrowers is considerably faster than that offered by alternative creditors. It offers different types of loans but Consumer Credit is still the biggest share. One of the advantages offered to investors is different layers of security of investments: Loan originators due diligence and risk management Buyback guarantee (on selected loans) and Payment guarantee (on selected loans) Skin in the game : loan originators are required to keep at least a 5% stake in each loan, aligning their interest and the investor’s one. This is really important, if you are like me a student of the Great Financial Crisis Collateral: in the...

I am 41, I started investing and reading about investing when I was 17. That's make 24 years of listening to smart people telling you that leverage is bad and reading about people who went broke because of leverage. In its essence, leverage is not inherently good or bad, it is a magnifier: if what you are doing is good, it makes it better, if what you are doing is bad (and usually you realise it too late), it makes it a disaster. When you invest, especially early in the process, it is important you make mistakes: one thing is to read that something is wrong, one thing is doing it and learn the lesson the hard way, with your own money. You have to learn from your mistakes so that you will not repeat them in the future. You have to learn that no investor is right 100% of the time, see it like the tuition to the investing university. But you have to live to fight another day. So, whatever the mistake, at the end of the day you still have a positive balance to invest the next d...

EstateGuru has been operational since November 2014 and is headquartered in Tallin, Estonia. The special feature of EstateGuru is that it started to offer loans to business customers for only short and medium term real estate project: it is a consumer-to-business lending platform. More recently, the platform marketed normal corporate loans backed by a collateral property. Each project comes with a detailed description and pictures, when available, or renderings of the planned real estate development: The minimum amount to participate in a project is EUR 50; if the required loan amount is raised within the subscription period, the loan agreement is concluded. Some loans pays monthly interests, others pay interest plus the principal back at the end of the project. Each loan is secured by a real estate property, usually with a first rank mortgage, the Loan-to-Value cannot exceed 75% and the property value is not determined by EstateGuru but by an accredited real estate apprais...

These are the platforms I have money with right now. They may or may not suit you, I have no special knowledge of how they operate, and there may be better options out there that I don't know about. If you're looking for “alternative” investments, I think peer-to-peer lending is a great start: it's very little effort, and you don't need to develop any knowledge before giving it a go. The links in this post may be affiliate links, which pay me a commission when you sign up – often, they pay you a bonus too. I say “may be” because I keep this section updated to reflect who I invest with, not who pays a commission. Nothing in this section constitutes a recommendation to invest with a specific platform, and you must do your own research. Twino FinBee Bondora EstateGuru LinkedFinance VIAInvest DoFinance I also invest in start-ups that operate in P2P, via Seedrs : Orca Abundance Assetz Exchange What I am reading now: Follow me on Twitter  @NProtasoni ...