a little bit ago i signed up for an account with prosper.com, and started poking around. prosper is in effect a tiny marketplace for lenders and borrowers to give each other their services. borrowers sign up and offer up information tidbits about themselves such as credit ratings, why they want a loan, and number of recent delinquencies, and are assigned a risk rating; lenders then offer up their own personal cash and, using the information tidbits about borrowers, bid on lending individuals cash at whatever interest rate they feel makes it worthwhile to make the loan, in return for the borrower’s promise to repay (against the threat of prosper levying a ding on the borrower’s credit rating). in theory, the middle ground between defaults and the interest rates on loans that are fulfilled should work out to something reasonable — and higher than what a regular savings account is earning now, if you gauge your risk right.

there’s a bit more to it than that, but what appeals to me about the site is it lets me indulge my crunchy granola liberal (help struggling women overcome bad decisions like i did!) while pacifying my inner free market capitalist (yeahh…what do i get?). so i’ve set up a transfer of $100 for after my next payday, which is enough to make two $50 (minimum) loans. if they both go bad, then i’ve spent my entertainment budget for april (and, for the record, yes: this is categorized under Entertainment, in my Quicken). if they both work out, then that’s $8 or so more that i didn’t have before, which i shall promptly spend on a sixer of a decent microbrew.

either way, it’ll be interesting to see what happens. (she says now, before anyone takes her $50 and runs.)