I want more

jimbotot

I have around 30k in savings and want more than 3% has anyone any experience of peer to peer lending or dealings with financial advisors.

Many thanks

Jim

badger09

jimbotot wrote: »

I have around 30k in savings and want more than 3% has anyone any experience of peer to peer lending or dealings with financial advisors.

Many thanks

Jim

I have experience of lending through Zopa since November 2006. What do you want to know?

There are several threads about P2P lending and Financial Advisers. Have you read through them?

bigfreddiel

jimbotot wrote: »

I have around 30k in savings

has anyone any experience of dealings with financial advisors.

jim, there are a shedload of fa's on this forum,they'll all be along in a moment to halp you - they do charge an up front fee so be prepared to pay £100/hour or more (plus vat of course)

cheers

fj

brendon

There are only really three sites I would be considering: Funding Circle, Rate Setter and ZOPA.

By far, the easiest to understand and use is ZOPA. They have recently introduced a SafeGuard feature which benefits you in respect to bad debt and not having tax deducted on losses -- the projected rates are currently 4.6%, but you can expect to get maybe 4% after it's lent out. I've been a member of the 'old ZOPA' which doesn't cover bad debt, and have made about 3.8% end-of-day return, before tax (on average rate of lending of 5.9%).

Funding Circle is also quite nice, but it is quite difficult to understand. You really need to understand how to interpret business accounts, etc, to make best use of the site. (You can get £40 cashback if I refer you -- PM me if you are interested.).

I haven't used Rate Setter, but it has bad debt provision similar to ZOPA.

Overall, I have been most comfortable with ZOPA, and that is where I recommend you look first. The biggest thing to bear in mind is that your money is not protected by the government, so don't over exposure yourself.

bigfreddiel

i also want more - besides p2p lending you should consider a s&s isa

i'm getting 10%+ with a balanced portfolio approach plus divi's of approx 4% as well - reinvesting right now so its appraching 14-15% growth.

fj

grey_gym_sock

you probably don't have enough money to make it worth paying for an IFA. even with more money, they're not necessary if you know what you're doing. though not everybody does know what they're doing

to get more idea about S&S, have a look at http://monevator.com/category/investing/passive-investing-investing/

opinions4u

More is there to be had.

If you're prepared to risk capital.

merlingrey

ZOPA is basically a NON- CDO: Collateralized debt obligation.

It works like CDO's but it is unsecured .

Now considering banks nearly went bust with these sorts of things it makes me nervous.

The only difference is these are not being bought/sold and speculated on in a derivatives market.

Also with ZOPA over £25k you have to get a lending license...that's the law i'm afraid.

bigfreddiel

grey_gym_sock wrote: »

.....to make it worth paying for an IFA. even with more money, ..... though not everybody does know what they're doing

and that includes ifa's - they don't know any better than you or i about the state of the world's finances, what they do know is how to minimise risk, but even that's doubtful

as we all know all finance movements is random,markets go up and go down, you can follow a trend for a while but what is certain it will reverse at some random point in the future.

good luck

fj

quotememiserable

merlingrey wrote: »

The only difference is these are not being bought/sold and speculated on in a derivatives market.

...although that's a mother of a big difference.

bigadaj

quotememiserable wrote: »

...although that's a mother of a big difference.

Well it removes one level of uncertainty at least.

Also with Zopa et al, the people lending the money have more involvement, ie skin in the game, if you're a banker playing with others money then the worst that can happen is loosing your job whilst retaining all those lovely bonuses from previous years when the gamble paid off!