Lending Club Approved and My Analysis/Savings

[Anonymous]

I just applied for a $27,000 loan that would payoff my two revolving credit card debts and was offered 8.71% for 36 months (APR, not interest, which was listed at 6.99% or something to that effect).  I noticed that some others got even lower rates, but this is what I qualified for. This equates to $840 per month.

I have two, big revolving CCs that amount to that and I planned on making $1000/month payments until paid in full.

I just did the math, properly amortized (I probably should have done it prior to applying, lol, but I knew I would save money) 

==================================================================

Chase Southwest Signature $16,000 @ 13.49% (balance amount rounded)

Citibank Preferred $11,000 @ 14.99% (balance amount rounded)

To pay off both in three years, I would have to make the following monthly payments:

Chase: $543 per month

Citibank: $382 per month

For a total of: $924 per month

================================================================== 

So, total cost over the life of the loans:

Lending Club: $30,240

Chase/Citibank: $33,264

But, they charged me 2.5% upfront of $27,000 or $675.  So, total cost of loan for lending club: $30,915

So, taking the upfront costs into account, the total costs are:

Lending Club: $30,915 (total interest paid = $3,915)

Chase/Citibank: $33,264 (total interest paid = $6,264)

Savings over the life of three year's worth of payments: $2,349 or roughly $65.25 per month in interest savings for me.

So, it's a good deal, even though they charged me 2.5% out of the box. 

There's a huge caveat though and that lies with interest rates.  My cards are tied to the prime rate, which just went up.  So, my values above assumed my rate would NOT go up.  If they do go up, then my savings would increase even more.

[Anonymous]

did they use lightsteam? to approve at lendingtree? what bureaus? softpull? your scores? your state

i m guessing higher the loan amount the lower is the interest rate? 

is there any pre-payment penalty? is loan orignation fee less than 5%? is it 2.5%?

Your math makes justification, i would think if you pre-Paid some within your first 6-9 mos without penalty that you would end up very near where chase/Citi payments would be?

[Anonymous]

It's lending club, not tree that I went through. It's a peer-to-peer lender I think, although it mentioned it's being handled by a bank in Utah, who probably handles everything for a cut. 

I don't show any inquiries on my report yet.

Also, they showed me everything I was approved for, including up to their $35k max and the interest rate they offered me for the $35k was slightly higher than the $27k. They also offered two terms, 36 or 60 months and again the 60 months carried an APR 2% higher for the $27k.

The term sheet showed loan amounts down to $1k.

The origination fee was 2.5%, which I included in my overall cost to borrow. 

Here's a strange thing, they charge you for writing a check, $7 per check and pretty much insist on direct drafts from your bank account. They do a test charge/credit of a dollar after you give them your routing and bank account number. I'm not paying $7 extra per check so they can direct draft that all they want. 

You can pay it off early through their website, there's a link that allows you to authorize additional, unscheduled drafts or you can pay $7 and send in more checks lol. No prepayment penalty. 

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

did they use lightsteam? to approve at lendingtree? what bureaus? softpull? your scores? your state

i m guessing higher the loan amount the lower is the interest rate? 

is there any pre-payment penalty? is loan orignation fee less than 5%? is it 2.5%?

Your math makes justification, i would think if you pre-Paid some within your first 6-9 mos without penalty that you would end up very near where chase/Citi payments would be?

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With most web based lenders it's the opposite.

[Anonymous]

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@franatic wrote:

It's lending club, not tree that I went through. It's a peer-to-peer lender I think, although it mentioned it's being handled by a bank in Utah, who probably handles everything for a cut. 

I don't show any inquiries on my report yet.

Also, they showed me everything I was approved for, including up to their $35k max and the interest rate they offered me for the $35k was slightly higher than the $27k. They also offered two terms, 36 or 60 months and again the 60 months carried an APR 2% higher for the $27k.

The term sheet showed loan amounts down to $1k.

The origination fee was 2.5%, which I included in my overall cost to borrow. 

Here's a strange thing, they charge you for writing a check, $7 per check and pretty much insist on direct drafts from your bank account. They do a test charge/credit of a dollar after you give them your routing and bank account number. I'm not paying $7 extra per check so they can direct draft that all they want. 

You can pay it off early through their website, there's a link that allows you to authorize additional, unscheduled drafts or you can pay $7 and send in more checks lol. No prepayment penalty. 

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It's Web Bank, and you won't get a hard inquiry. Lending Club is soft pull only, and they pull TU.

[Anonymous]

Yep.  That $35k loan was slightly higher than the $27k I took. 

Lower loan amounts were less, albeit it was diminishing returns in regards to APR and loan amount below $20k.  In other words, the drop from $20k to $10k was kind of small versus $35k to $20k

[Anonymous]

So just a little update on my experience. 

Well today day I got an email stating that my loan was fully funded and will be deposited soon, up to four days. 

The only documents I needed was confirming my email address when they sent me my confirmation email the day I applied.  That's it. 

This whole process has been very interesting. During the funding process you can log into your account and actually see people, like you or me, investing in your loan. It was really neat.  They didn't provide names, just a map of the United States with circles that were bigger or smaller depending on the size of the investment.  You can hover over those circles and it would give you city and amount.  

Most of the investments were for $25 each as I guess people who invest in this do so in tiny amounts across many loans to spread out their risk. There were a few larger amounts, but that was the norm. You can also see what I would describe as "investment clubs" by having a cluster of investments all pop up at the same time, for the same amount in one city. For example, Milwaukee popped up four investors at $25 each, simultaneously. I could imagine that this is a group of people who might be in some investment club and decided to invest in me. 

It was really intriguing watching this unfold and seeing who invested in me. Most of my investors were clustered around the SF Bay Area, Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. Texas, Seattle and New York were also well represented. I had a few from Hawaii!  

Here's another surprising thing, as of this morning, I only showed $5k worth of investment in my loan. Now, according to their website, it can take up to 14 days to get fully funded. Fast forward to just now, and I got an email that said I was fully funded. I logged in and sure enough, it said fully funded and my deposit will be coming.  I can only guess that there may have been a huge rush after Christmas of people checking their accounts and deciding on who to invest in or an institutional investor bought me up. 

In any case, I'm happy and I'll report back when it gets deposited. It was very interesting and if you need a personal loan, even for a small amount, I would suggest this just for the experience. 

For those curious, my Fico scores are 737-754, with TU having the 737. I have an 80% revolving debt utilization at the time of my application, that will all but disappear now at a significant savings 

[Anonymous]

i have 80+ % utilization and 670 TU score? i also have pre-approval lending club upto $35k letter valid until jan 12, 2016.

Your post inspires me to apply just to check it out with a soft pull? 

The hold up is if i do it upon 700+ in TU scores and six new account monthly payments on car note. That should spell a good indication of on time required monthly payments. This dec 29th, 2015 will complete 6 payments on my auto loan.

[Creditaddict]

They are SP to check rate.

Also check sofi.com

[Anonymous]

Go for it!

My funds were deposited in my bank today. Took one day. 

There's caveats, though, they require auto withdrawals.  First payment is due for me on January 29th, so they go one month from the time of funding, so keep that in mind.  Not sure if it's flexible.  You can pay by check, but they charge you $7. 

There are different tiers in terms of interest rates as well, although they all seem reasonable. 

The whole experience was really interesting.

Good luck.