As I write this post, my latest $100 transfer slowly makes it’s way from my bank to my Prosper account. On May 11th at 5 PM, the deposit will become available for me to bid, bringing my total investment to date to $1000.

Either I’m good at picking loans or just lucky but I’ve funded 18 of them, received payments on 10, and have not had any late payments to date. In this post, I’ll provide the details of my performance as well as provide some tips for maximizing your returns from Prosper. Bear in mind that I am not an expert at this, I’m merely providing you with my opinion and what’s been working for me. There is a good chance that one or more of my loans will default at some point. Please do your own due diligence on any loans you make.

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Well it turns out my company still considers me highly compensated, they just changed the rules to allow higher contributions by such employees to our 401K plans.

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This seems simple but I too often forget to do it…

Some background first: I have a Household Bank credit card that pays me 2% cash back on all purchases. I use it to pay for just about everything until I max out the cash rewards ($400 per year). I especially like this card for business expenses I’ll get reimbursed for. Essentially, my company is spending part of the $20,000 a year I’ll put on this card and I’m making some free money on the cash back.

This is all well and good, but how can you make even more money on cash reward cards?

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A week ago, the stocks in my Investment Experiment portfolio were geting creamed. My portfolio of three stocks, which had been up over 10% for the year had retreated to almost break even. My performance, which had been handily beating the S&P had fallen behind. Ameritrade (AMTD) and Shanda (SNDA) were both taking beating, losing money every day for a couple of weeks. Sara Lee (SLE) was quietly making small gains, I was up about a percent or two.

What a difference a week makes….

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About a month ago I opened a $2000 one year CD with Netbank in response to an offer I saw after logging in.  The CD is paying 5.01% and with a $2000 deposit had a reward of a $50 Netbank gift card.

This works out to a 7.5% return on the money, currently the best rate I have for guaranteed savings.

The offer is not so hot now, although the CD is now paying 5.2%, you need a minimum deposit of $5000 in order to get a $25 gift card.   Not a great reward but the CD rate is attractive.

A reader asked for an explanation of why I Bond rates have declined recently while interest rates in general have been rising. Rather than bury the answer in another comment I thought I’d post it here. Bear in mind that I am not a professional financial guide. Please check with one before acting on anything I might say on this blog…

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Rates for the next six months for I Bonds were released today. The fixed rate was raised to 1.4%, while the variable rate is 1% as expected from the CPI-U numbers announced in mid-April.

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Got a note today from Vanguard (who manages my company’s 401k plan). Apparently I can now contribute up to 16% of my salary again (up from 10%). This will let me hit the IRS limit of $15,000 for the year but I now have some catching up to do…

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