Portsmouth on the Brink
I’m glad that I visited Fratton Park earlier in the season, as it looks like the club may not come out of administration according to this report on the BBC.
Rules for Zopa
I’ve now got back to looking after myself a bit better and I’m now keeping a proper check on my Zopa lending.
I think it’s fair to summarise a few points about my lending, which incidentally started in October 2008.
- About a quarter of all the approximately 2,300 contracts that I have lent money on have closed, with all the interest and money being repaid. All of this money has now been relent.
- Generally, there is about a £100 pounds that has not been lent, as people are still signing contracts and getting properly checked.
- At present there are 7 contracts that are late with payments and three have defaulted. One of the latter actually died, so that was unfortunate, but mainly for him.
- Since my stroke, I lend on a little and often basis. I restrict all contracts to no more than £10 and only lend to those in credit categories A and A*, which are the highest. I also adjust the rate I charge so that my money gets lent out quickly. I will probably change this when I’m a hundred percent better and I need to put in more money. But Zopa seems to be getting the money lent quickly, so why shouldn’t I make it work!
- I’ve only ever lent over 36 months.
Managing this properly means that I’m getting a return of about 5.5 to 6%, which is not bad in the present circumstances.
So how would I invest a sum in Zopa as a new lender, so that money was at the least risk.
- Read everything I can about Zopa and probably join their forum to ask questions from actual lenders and borrowers.
- Start with investing a sum, that you can afford to lose some of. I started with some of the proceeds of the sale of my late wife’s Porsche Boxster. Often a sum of £200 to £300 is a good value to start with.
- Set the maximum level you are going to lend to one borrower at £10. It’s very easy to adjust, so as you get used to Zopa, you can increase it.
- Set that you will only lend over 36 months to those with the highest credit ratings of A and A* and adjust your interest rates to something that gives you a sensible return and also a Medium or High lending speed. There’s no point in trying to get a 10% return, when no-one will borrow at that rate!
- Check what is happening every one or two days, so you can see how things are progressing.
- I analyse data and have made sure, that I have kept everything about the lending in a fairly simple Excel spreadsheet. This enables me to calculate returns effectively, but also I can see which strategies work to my advantage in the best way.
Have I made any mistakes? Yes of course!
- I used to lend in the Youth market because I thought it was morally a good idea and also because I got a higher rate. But I got one bad debt from this market and found that money tended to go slowly into it, as there didn’t seem to be the demand. So I no longer lend new money to this market, although of course I do have existing contracts in it, which are going fairly well. The figures now, two years since I started lending include one bad debt in 216 contracts and a return rate upwards of 7%. So perhaps it is a market, I shall start to put my feet back in, in the next few months.
- My maximum lending amount to any one borrower was too high, so that I was more likely to feel bad on a default. I suspect that it’s less risky to lend 10 lots of £10, than one of a £100.but on the other hand as you increase this maximum level,the money does tend to go out faster. As Zopa only charge you a fixed percentage on the money lent, there is no disadvantage to lending lots of small amounts.
- I also had more than one profile, which meant that as each profile has money to lend, I could also lend money twice in the same loan to one borrower. It would not be a good idea, as it then breaks your maximum rule.
As I said earlier don’t take my word for it. Read all you can about Zopa and if you want to swim, have little paddle first!
The A11 Missing Link Goes Ahead
Or that’s what it looks like after the government’s cost cutting according to this report on the BBC.
I know you could have argued that in our current state all road projects should go, but this is one that will pay for itself in lives saved because of the dangerous Elveden village.
The upgrading of the A14 through Cambridge has been scrapped, but if the Felixstowe to Peterborough rail freight mprovements kick in as they should, then the congestion caused by heavy lorries may decrease. Remember too, that a lot of the cars on this section of the A14 are commuters working in the high-tech businesses in the Cambridge area and these are just the commuters that might use alternative technological alternatives.
So if it was the A14 or the A11, then the A11 is the more iportant. It’s just a pity though, that there appear to be no plans in place to improve the links between Great Yarmouth and the rest of the country. The A11 Missing Link will be a great help, but work on the Acle Straight would very much be welcomed.
Boiler Room Scams on BBC Radio Tonight
They are investigating boiler room scams on the Adrian Goldberg program tonight on BBC Radio 5 Live at 21:00!
A Warning About On-Line Loan Brokers
The BBC is today warning about on-line loan brokers, who take up-front fees and then don’t give you a loan. Apparently, there has been a large rise in complaints to the Office of Fair Trading.
Verified By Visa
I’m all for good Internet security, but this system on my Visa card is totally useless.
The reason is that I can never remember the password and as it has to be entered,partly in upper and partly in lower-case, even if I do, it is a nightmare to type in with my gammy left hand. So inevitably, I end up having to create a new password, which surely defeats the system in the first place.
Thinking laterally, if American Express can get their security right in a much simpler way and in many years of using their card on-line, I’ve never had a problem, then surely Verified By Visa in its current form is a waste of space.
I’ve just started to get spam from someone claiming to be verifbyvisa.com. Because of my problems in using the system, I was quite worried, but on checking, there was no problem.
Bank Margins
The margins banks are charging on lending are being criticised. And rightly so!
It’s actually all our fault. We borrow too much to on things like credit cards and always go the conservative route about how we borrow and invest. We also don’t shop around with our banking and change when we should!
So don’t complain about the banks, look for sensible alternatives.
As I’ve said before, I lend money through Zopa. I also know of people, who’ve used the company for a loan. I’ve not heard any complaints yet. So it does appear there are alternatives out there! But be prudent! It’s just a pity that Prudence wasn’t, or we’d all be in a better state.
Boxing Clever
Boxing Clever is the title of two articles in September’s edition of Modern Railways magazine. They detail the works being done to upgrade the major freight lines of Felixstowe to Nuneaton and Southampton to Birmingham, so that they can take the larger 9 ft 6 in high containers (boxes) from the ports to and from industrial centres. In times of austerity and climate change, it is interesting to see how these projects which will cut out hundreds of thousands of lorry journeys are being carried out and managed using some very innovative solutions. So much so,m that it appears that the second project might be £10m under its £70.7m budget.
It is an example of very good project management and shows how by spending money wisely to remove freight bottle-necks is to the good of us all. You could argue for instance that Felixstowe to Nuneaton enhancement might be the equivalent of adding extra capacity to the A14, which is a road, that really can’t be widened too easily, as the Orwell bridge was only built for two lanes each way.
I particularly liked the way that the 1847 Southampton Tunnel was made larger. Rather than use the traditional approach and closing the tunnel for two to three months, as they did when they upgraded Ipswich Tunnel, they did it a track at a time closing for only three weekends and over Christmas 2009, saving a year on the project.
It is my belief that we can save a lot of money on infrastructure projects, like roads, railways, hospitals ands schools by thinking things through with a great deal more innovation, enterprise and by borrowing good and proven ideas and methods from other countries and industries.
Would a Private Firm Ever Buy Anything with Something Like PFI?
It’s grim reading about the problems the NHS is facing over bloated PFI deals.
No-one with any sense would ever have locked themsaelves into such deals. I’m sure people like Tesco have probably used design, build and maintain for stores and depots, but they wouldn’t have ended up paying six times the cost of the building. They’d have also used standard designs to save building costs. I bet each hospital is very different.
The problem is not with PFI, but with the politicians, civil servants and administrators, who pushed these deal through. In a banana republic, I would be smelling the pungent smell of bungs, bribery and favours. But here it’s just bad economics and incompetence. And who was in charge of the country’s finance at the time? So add this to a list of his big mistakes, like pensions, banks, renewing Trident etc. Gordon Brown must rank as the worst Prime Minister any country in Europe has ever had. let lone the UK!
Are Redundancies Responsible for a Surge in New Companies?
This was posed by Robert Watts in today’s Sunday Times, but I can’t find it on-line. Is this because The Times are restricting what they put on-line?
But it’s not even mentioned in othe web sites, that we are now having a real surge in new company registrations.
But this is understandable as recessions are one of the best times to start a business, as companies are trying to outsource goods and services, there is a good supply of quality people, machinery, premises and other things available. Often from companies that have gone bust! We started Metier in the depth of a recession and you can’t say, that that wasn’t a success!
The only problem with this recession, is the attitude of the banks, but then, it would appear that many are using redundancy money as seed capital for their businesses.
The Anonymous Widower 