Hey all my awesome RSS Readers.  If you’re using google reader, they are going to shut it down in mid june.  If you’re still interested in subscribing by RSS, Check out feedly, which is what I’ve switched too.  I’ve also got an email list, or you can like me on facebook or follow me on twitter.

I’m not really the gambling type.  I occasionally enjoy going and playing some table games in vegas, but when I do that I have a set budget and leave when the cash is gone.  I go to vegas about once every 3 years (and that will probably dwindle now that most of my friends are married) so gambling isnt really something that I do.

Last year, my friend did this NCAA tournament pool that was pretty interesting.  You got a set of numbers, with the first number pertaining to the last digit of the score for the higher seed, and the second digit pertaining to the score of the lower seed.  You got these numbers for each tournament game, from the opening rounds until the championship game.  Watching the final game with him last year was exciting, because as the clock wore down, his numbers started to get closer and closer.  He told me the prize for just that single game was almost $800 bucks, so it got me intrigued.

The difficult thing about trying to predict these is that there are so many garbage time free throws, last second shots that hit (or miss) that can knock you into (or out of) winnings.  The game was called “squares” and this year, I decided to try it.  I sent in my $40 bucks to the pool operator and got my numbers, 6 for the lower seed, and 1 for the higher seed.  This meant that for every game whose scores ended for 6 with the lower seed and 1 for the higher seed, I would win some money.  The amount was $20 for the first round games, and went up each round beyond that.

Well, I hit my numbers on the first round during the michigan – south dakota state (shame too, because I like the jacks) game, and was pretty happy about winning $20 bucks.  It was nice to see me earn some of my money back – which was pretty good.  After that, I kept track of my numbers but didnt really hit anything and by the time the final four rolled around, I had pretty much written it off, even though the prizes were ballooning to above 300 per game, and almost 800 for the final game.  There were 3 games left, and it didnt look good for me.  This was a fun thing to do with $20, and I’d think about doing it again next year.

Well, during the final four, michigan game through for me again.  They were playing syracuse, and because they were both 4 seeds entering the tournament, I had to consult the master list of seeds.  Thankfully, michigan was the higher seed, and I ended up winning $320 off of that game!  I was pretty excited about it, too.  It brought my total winnings to $340 for the tourney, but presented a problem: What would I do with the money?

As you readers know, I’ve been working really, really hard to knock the truck loan out since christmas so that we can free up some cashflow and lower my insurance so it wont cost so much.  According to my estimates, it should free up almost 425/month.  These winnings, plus the new spending rules that H and I set this month, should mean that by mid-may, the truck will be completely paid off!

One of the most frequent tips that I see about saving money is to go find whatever you are looking for on craigslist.  They would write about all of these amazing deals that they got on craigslist for all these popular items they were seeking and how much they saved over buying from a flea market or some other used source.  Typically the deals were amazing, but whenever I read those posts, I’d say something like

That will never work for me.  For craigslist to work, you need a lot of people with a lot of stuff, and wyoming doesnt have a lot of people.  Those people that I do know with a lot of stuff very rarely get rid of it because they fix it or repurpose the parts, so I doubt there’s a lot of stuff on there either.

This was said everywhere, in comment on those posts and in my own head.  It was also said with our really doing any checking whatsoever on craigslist for the things I needed (though I did look at cars a few times, and that justified what I thought).  I kept this up for quite a while, until recently.  When we replaced our washing machine and dryer we just moved the old, inefficient ones out of the laundry room and into what will become the third bedroom, but was some old bar (maybe?) and is now just basically a room full of our junk.  Lots of it is stuff that we have yet to unpack (after almost a year – apparently we dont need it that badly) and a few of my supplies for homemade hard cider.  So, for about 5 months, it has sat, unused, in the empty room.

The room started to pile up with stuff and H and I decided that we needed to slowly but surely drawdown the supply of things in there.  We gave a bunch of stuff to the salvation army, and I finally got off my hindquarters and listed the washing machine and dryer on craigslist.  I was honestly only expecting to toss them in the alley and wait for them to disappear, so getting any amount of money for them would be a bonus.  So, I started looking on craigslist to see where I should price the units so that I could move them quickly (as a pair, hopefully) and get the most money I can for them.  What I found however, was a total gold mine.

I had been completely wrong about craigslist in wyoming (we only have 1 for the whole state).  There was some awesome stuff in there!  Now that I’ve spent some time tooling around on craigslist, H and I have found 2 different sources for local chicken eggs in cheyenne.  Not only are the eggs from locally raised chickens, but they are also cheaper than the eggs that we buy at the grocery store that are “organic and cage free”.  We havent picked up our first batch yet, but I’m really excited.  Since I started training for the race, I’ve been eating a lot of eggs (hard boiled and otherwise) to work on my fledgling diet (which I’ll be writing as soon as I muster up the inner strength to admit that I failed, miserably).  In addition to the eggs on craigslist, I found a ton of other stuff that would have helped H and I when we were doing our housework all summer.

So now that I’ve actually looked through craigslist – it’s nice to have it as a resource.  Obviously, wyomings craigslist has a lot more goats and horses for sale than the average craigslist, but even then – those are still things I’d like to buy.  Unfortunately, craigslist wont solve all of my problems when I need a tool or something of the like, but it’s a great option to have when I need something am looking for a great deal.

One thing though, is that this craigslist is for the entire state – some parts of which H and I are 7+ hours away from, and that’s one way.  There’s a few other local craigslists that are closer, but for some smaller items where the savings isnt that great, it wont be worth it for a 1.5 hr round trip (or more) to go pick up something that will end up saving just a few dollars.  There’s actually something that I found recently that I really wanted (a free trailer) but it would have been a 7+ hour round trip to get there and get back home.  It’d be nice if everything was a bit closer, but other than that small complaint, it’s nice to know that craigslist is actually active in my area.

For anyone curious about the washer, I sold it in about a day.

Readers: Is there something that you brushed off initially but later found that it had great value to you, like I did with craigslist?  Why did you dismiss it right away, and what made you give it a second look?

As some of you know, I decided to try out Peer to Peer lending with lending club last year. For those that are unfamiliar with the service, it basically acts as a “bank” with you being the funder.  They pass on higher returns to you, and they pass on interest rates that are lower than what the credit card companies offer to the borrower.

Well, a lot has happened since my last update.  I was chugging along at a nice clip above 11% last time I checked in, but it seems like I’ve had a few things go sideways on me since then.  I’ve had 2 notes default, once of which was rated A3, and the other which was rated C3.  The person with the A note seems to have something go seriously sideways.  The C3 note made just 1 payment to lending club and then never paid again.  Not too sure what happened with those people either.  So, after an initial investment of $1000, I’ll never get back about 46.98, which will seriously put a dent in my returns.  Other than those two defaults, I have 1 note that is 15-30 days late, and I dont know what the story will end up being with that either.  The two that defaulted had been in the second round of investments (the A grade one) and the other one was in the third round of investments (the C grade one).

Thankfully, that’s all with the bad news.  I’ve had 3 borrowers pay off their notes in full already.  I’m glad to have the money back, but I didnt get the interest that I was expecting out of the group, so that’s unfortunate.  I got a total of $4.26 out of the three of those notes, instead of the full year of interest.  Perhaps they started reading my website, and decided to get rid of their debt?  (Yea, I didnt think so either).  Either way, they have paid their loan, and I’ve reinvested the money into other notes.

What was the craziest thing was how far the ROI went down (~66%) after 1% of my notes defaulted).  It seemed like as I began to take on more risk, I started getting hit with defaults, though one of the defaults was an A grade note that was using it for real estate investing purposes.

These defaults were bound to happen, and I’m pretty shocked that I was able to go this far without having one to be honest.  It is disappointing to watch my return rate get nailed like that, but it’s still chugging along at a greater rate of return than a regular savings account, though I am taking on a bit more risk.   Below are the details of my portfolio:

As you can see, over 50% of my risk is in the A and B grade notes, and when you add in the C grade notes, that percentage goes up to 78% of my total money invested.  While I havent had my D, E & F grade notes for very long, none of them have defaulted at the current moment.   Now that you know how my risk is spread out, lets look at my total stats.  Like I mentioned in the earlier posts, I invested $1,000 over three different time periods.  My first investment was 300, my next was a few weeks later for 300 again, and my last was a couple months after the first, for 400 to even out my total investment at 1,000.  Each of the investment groupings are broken down into their own portfolios via lending club, plus an additional portfolio for the principal and interest payments that come in every month.  Here’s where my account is at.

Im a little skeptical of the Net annualized return, because earlier this week it was above 10%, so I’m not sure what the deal is at the moment and why its so low.  Perhaps they didnt count the defaults when I last logged in.  The portfolio generates about $32 per month in principal and interest repayments, and when I get those payments back, I invest in more notes and place them in a different portfolio like I mentioned earlier.  At the beginning I was fairly conservative, investing in mostly A and B notes, an taking on a few C and D grade notes just to balance it out.  The portfolio that is made up of exclusively loans that were principal and interest payments took on significantly more risk, as I was feeling more comfortable with the platform and the returns that I was making over the term and was looking forward to juicing up my returns.

As I’m looking at everything right now though, it may be time to get more conservative with my lending with the next few batches of notes.  While 4.17% is a good return, I feel like I’m taking on more risk than 4.17% worth.  Had I tossed all of this in a S&P 500 index tracker for the last 12 months, my return would have been in the 13% area, so clearly I would have been better off there (and even more so because had I timed the purchases the same, I would have done a significant amount of buying during the low period in july 2012).  While I obviously didnt expect to make a huge return off of this little play investment, I dont really want it to lose money either.  Obviously, I understood that I was taking on risk, but I thought that I was diversified enough for it not to really affect my total rate of return all that much.

A few days after the writing this post, it looked like this was a low in the ROI, and it looks like my return is starting to creep back up.  I’m curious to see what it does in the next couple months, but since everything now is current on my account, my ROI should start to creep back up.  While this isnt going as swimmingly as I’d hoped, there’s no QE on personal loans from the fed, so a little downturn is expected.  I’ll see what happens with the rate in the future.

Readers: Do you use lending club or prosper?  If so, have you caught a handful of defaults that thorpedoed your ROI like I did?  What did you do about it?

Occasionally, I browse reddit for interesting pictures and other stories.  Every once in a while, I find something there that’s funny or whatever, but some of the most interesting things are the AMA’s.  For those who are not total internet nerds like myself, a Reddit AMA is where someone shares a unique experience, and you can ask them anything about whatever the title is.  Here are a few examples that were posted as of this writing on r/AMA.

I am in a caravan of 5 vehicles driving from Boston to Florida with 50 sea turtles to release them back to the sea. We’ll be driving all night and picking up some of the sea turtles along the way. AMA and please help keep us awake tonight!

I was mauled by a bear, fought it off and drove 4 miles down a mountain with my face hanging off.

There’s some pretty interesting stuff on there, but this one really struck me.  The guy lived in a tree on public land  (Update here) while he was working.  Basically, he built a platform big enough for him to sleep on and do a few other things, carried it out to a remote location on public land (A state park in Marin County, CA) and set it up in a tree, pretty high off the ground.  (As someone who has been on a lot of public land around the country, I know how easy this would be).  I cant seem to find how long he lived in the tree, but I think I saw that it was about a year the first time that I read it.

The more I thought about it, the more it sounded like a great way to kill expenses and pay off a lot of debt in a hurry.   He was working a real job, and making a lot of money, but his only expenses seemed to be a cell phone, a storage shed,  food and a membership to the local gym (which he got a discount on, no less).  As I was scrolling through the questions, it seems like someone else had the exact same thought.  Someone asked if he was increasing his spending elsewhere to make up for what he was saving in rent and this was his response:

I paid off a bunch of debts which was awesome, it got my finances basically in order. It was a little bit painful to move into a duplex and start paying rent again.

Before I got married, I thought of all the awesome financial things that would happen right after we got married.  Income would go up, spending would stay about the same, and H and I would be able to build a gigantic savings account in no time.  We would of course, be doing this all while updating our house and having fun in the process.

Unfortunately, it hasnt gone as swimmingly as that.  We are still getting used to being responsible to someone else about our finances and the decisions we make.  We have still made lots of progress in building up our savings account and we have almost paid off the truck loan, but honestly I figured that we’d be far ahead of where we are now.  We were both feeling it, but didnt really know exactly what we should do about it – all we both knew was that what we are currently doing wasnt working all that great.  Even though there’s tons of data behind our money, we really couldnt think of where some of our cash was going – it was just slowly leaking out everywhere.  Most of it is going to stuff that we could probably turn down or not do, but it is fun so we usually say yes.

We both admitted that we were basically spending a bit more than we normally did because we were assuming the other person was spending less – which is not really the case.  H and I have both gone on trips with our dads (and had fun) and we are also planning a trip for this summer, in addition to a wedding (that I’m in) and my race.  We’ll be travelling a lot this summer (again), and are looking to make sure that we do it as economically as possible.  We will be doing some camping, and hopefully staying with friends as well.

Now that we’ve settled on a “hard ceiling” for the monthly spending, I think that I’m going to find a dry erase board and write on it something along the lines of “Today is the X day of April, and we have spent Y Dollars so far.  There is Z Dollars left to spend this month”.  This would be kept out somewhere we would see it frequently, like the kitchen.

We are a bit tired of running around all the time, and the house has taken a back seat lately as we have gotten it into “operational order” for the most part.  That has been nice, but it would also be nice to have a bathroom with a door on the main floor.  After a long money talk, we decided on a cap for our monthly budget.  Once we hit that number of spending for the month, it’s time to cut off and get everything sorted out.  We are trying it out this month, and I’ll let you know how it goes.

Readers: What do you think about the plan?  Was it basically a forgone conclusion that H and I had some adjustments to being responsible for finances?