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Weemba: Loans 2.0

March 19, 2012 By Shane Ede 11 Comments

The following post is sponsored, and I am being compensated to write it. That doesn’t change the fact that I’m doing a review, and it will be honest.

When I was first asked to do a review of Weemba, I’d never heard of it.  (See? Honesty!)  As any good reviewer will do, the first thing I did was try and figure out just what it was that I was to be reviewing.  I’ll extrapolate later on, but here’s how they put it in a recent press release.

Weemba revolutionizes the way borrowers and professional lenders connect via an online financial platform. Weemba provides, by means of unique proprietary methods and state-of-the-art safeguards, a virtual way for borrowers to post their needs and for lenders to then find those borrowers.  Protected by a nickname, borrowers post project profiles for lenders to review; interested lenders ask borrowers to access their private information, and if granted access, can contact borrowers directly. Weemba facilitates the borrower-lender interaction without interfering in the negotiation process.

It sounded a bit like a peer-to-peer solution, which, as I’m sure you’ve read, I’m a fan of, so I figured I’d give it a review.  (Doesn’t hurt that I was paid to do it too.)

Sign-Up

Signing up for Weemba was pretty easy.  In fact, if you so choose (I did.), you can sign up using your Facebook account.  You create a Community ID which will be used for their forums and support, and give them the necessary personal details.  If you’ve ever filled out a loan application, you know what I mean.  Name, address, SSN, etc.  There’s also the multiple-choice questions that they pull from your credit info (from Equifax) to verify you are who you say you are.  That’s it.  Fill in the info, verify, and you’re off.

Adding a Loan Project

Once you’ve completed the sign-up process, you’re taken directly to the loan project creation page.  You’re asked to choose between a personal and business loan type.  I chose personal, but they do have the system in place for both.  I advance through, and then get down to the nitty-gritty of the loan project.  Give it a name, tell the lenders what type of loan it is, how much you want, what amortization method you’d like (Installments, Balloon, or Lump Sum), the desired length of the loan, funding type (Full funding only or partial funding accepted), and then are given the option of adding your Equifax Credit Score.

I balked a bit here.  If you know how the credit score programs from any of the credit bureaus normally work, you’re usually signing up for a free trial to their credit score monitoring service that is followed by a paid service.  There wasn’t any mention of whether it really cost me anything or not, so I read the Terms and Conditions.  There, it does mention that some of their services do cost a monthly fee, but doesn’t mention any of the services by name, so I still couldn’t be sure.  Later, I looked in the FAQs and it does mention there that it’s “no cost”, but with no further details.  I don’t see any way around adding your credit score to a legit loan project, so if you’re adding one to seriously pursue a loan, you’ll need to do so.  I wasn’t going to publish the loan project, so I didn’t add the credit score.

Once you’ve gotten the credit score added, you get a chance to add details of the loan, some secure info (contact and some advanced qualifiers for their search engine), create a forum for your project, and then add an Avatar or videos to the loan project.  The avatar will be displayed in their search results, and on the rotator on their home page.  There’s also a “W-SEO” score added to the end.  From what I could tell, it looks to be a ranking of sorts based on how much info you filled out, and is dynamically updated after the loan is published with info on conversation, ratings, etc.

What I Think

For a company that claims to revolutionize the way “borrowers and professional lenders connect”, I saw a lack of any major revolutionary ideas.  Essentially, they act as a loan broker.  They do it online, so maybe that’s the revolutionary part?  I kind of thought that Lending Tree did that ages ago, no?  Or, maybe it’s the search combined with some decidedly social aspects?  I’ll give them that.  Sites like Lending Tree basically pull your info and then spit it out to some local lender that you’ve matched with, so giving the lenders the ability to search for some quality borrowers while giving the borrowers some social tools is a good step up.  I’m just not sure that it deserves the revolutionary PR jargon. They broker the loan, by facilitating the connection.  Once the connection is made, it’s handled privately between the borrower and the lender.

Overall, Weemba looks like a good service that will fill a need both on the borrower and lender side.  I’m a big fan of peer-to-peer because it gives the borrowers to make a case for themselves.  Something that Weemba does too.  I couldn’t find any information on who the lenders are, or if there’s a process for becoming a lender, so I’m assuming that it’s mostly institutions.  Still, a good service, that will allow borrowers to find some competitive offers for their lending business.

If you decide to give Weemba a try, here’s a few things I’d make sure to do to better your odds of finding a lender.

  • Be honest.  If there’s a story behind your debt, or the reason for the loan, share it.
  • Add a credit score.  I don’t know a lender that isn’t going to hesitate if the loan project doesn’t have a credit score.
  • Add a good avatar.  Even if it’s a picture of the car you want to buy.  A picture is going to help you. Same for video if it applies.
  • Answer Questions.  If a lender asks a question, or needs clarification, answer it promptly.

What do you think?  Would you give Weemba a try?  Why? Why not?

Shane Ede

I started this blog to share what I know and what I was learning about personal finance. Along the way I’ve met and found many blogging friends. Please feel free to connect with me on the Beating Broke accounts: Twitter and Facebook.

You can also connect with me personally at Novelnaut, Thatedeguy, Shane Ede, and my personal Twitter.

www.beatingbroke.com

Filed Under: Business Finance, Credit Score, loans Tagged With: loan broker, loan project, loans, online loan broker, weemba, weemba review

Suze Orman Releases Prepaid Card. Wait, What?

January 11, 2012 By Shane Ede 17 Comments

Suze Orman, one of the most well known personal finance gurus in the media, announced a few days ago that she had created, and was releasing, a new prepaid debit card.  Prepaid debit cards, if you’re not familiar with them, are cards, like credit cards, where you prepay and then can only use the card for amounts up to what you’ve prepaid.  In most cases, they are marketed towards people who are unable to get credit cards because of bad credit.

Phil, from PT Money, blasted Suze for the card, on his site and on twitter.  I can’t say that I entirely disagree with him.  His problem with the card, and mine, is that prepaid cards should be a last resort for people who are unable to get a bank or Credit Union account that has a debit card attached to it.  What Suze is doing with this card, however, is pushing it to the general public who really have no use for it, and, by using it instead of a debit card from their bank or CU, are going to be lining the pockets of Bancorp (the bank behind the card) and Suze.  That’s shady, when you are claiming to be “America’s Most Trusted Personal Finance Expert”.  If she is an expert, she should know better. And, I think she does.  Which is why, instead of responding to PT (and others) on Twitter with a factual defense of the card, she had this to say:

Suze Orman Calls PT Money an Idiot
Suze Orman Calls PT Money an Idiot

Terrible way to take criticism, Suze.  To some degree, I discount her response because of the “sassy” way that she responds to questions and such on her shows, but I think she crossed the line here.  It’s one thing to tell the guy who calls in and asks if he should buy a new car when he’s 500k in debt an idiot, but another thing altogether when you’re calling a guy an idiot simply because he thinks your new prepaid card is a bad product.

Is the card a bad product? To Suze’s credit, unlike some prepaid cards that have had celebrity endorsers, this one has plenty of good things going for it.  It includes a credit watch program, and a free credit report with credit score.  It’s got a program to allow you to put money into a separate account for an emergency fund, free bill pay, and the ability to transfer money from one cardholder to another.

But, my Credit Union has all those things.  A $3/month fee on the card isn’t the worst of the cards, but it’s still a fee.  $36 a year to have access to your own money via a debit card?  Come on.  Again, my Credit Union does that, and they do it for free.  Yes, there are some who are unable to get a bank account.  And for those people, if you absolutely need to have access to a Visa/Mastercard card, then go for it.  But, despite what Suze is claiming, don’t expect it to improve your credit score.

There is no way that any of the credit agencies are going to take your activity on a prepaid card into account.  They’ve never taken your cash spending habits into account, and a prepaid card is no different than spending cash.  Would it be nice?  Absolutely.  Many of us who make most of our transactions on debit cards or with cash would agree.  But, it isn’t going to happen.  Your cash spending has nothing to do with your credit, so why would a credit score take that into account?

I just don’t see enough difference between this, and other similar cards to say that Suze went out on a limb here and created a product that is going to change the industry.  As a prepaid card, it’s decent.  There are better.  In the end, it’s still just a prepaid card that should be used as a last option when you can’t/won’t get a bank or credit union account with a debit card.

Read what some other Personal Finance Bloggers are saying:

Suze Orman’s “Approved Card” gets Denied; Thinks PF Bloggers are Idiots

Suze Orman’s new prepaid debit card: The Approved Card

My two cents on Suze Orman and her prepaid card

Young, Gullible, and Broke: Suze Orman’s debit card FAIL

Suze Orman’s prepaid debit card scam

Suze Orman’s Card is Not Approved by Me

Suze Orman’s Approved Prepaid Debit card is Bad for Consumers

Suze Orman Shows True Colors with Her Approved Prepaid Debit Card

And that’s just a smattering of the posts on the subject.  I have yet to come across one that is entirely positive about the card. What do you think? Do you think that Suze did a good thing here, or is it just another way to milk some money out of her followers?

Shane Ede

I started this blog to share what I know and what I was learning about personal finance. Along the way I’ve met and found many blogging friends. Please feel free to connect with me on the Beating Broke accounts: Twitter and Facebook.

You can also connect with me personally at Novelnaut, Thatedeguy, Shane Ede, and my personal Twitter.

www.beatingbroke.com

Filed Under: credit cards, Credit Score, Financial News Tagged With: approved prepaid, pt money, Suze Orman, suze orman prepaid, suze orman rude

Your Credit Score Now Available on Kindle

July 28, 2011 By Shane Ede 8 Comments


The Beating Broke Guide to Your Credit Score is a guide that I wrote a while back, that has been available as a download here on the site as a .pdf document for some time.  With the recent rise in usage for ebook readers, I thought it was time that it got converted over and presented as a kindle ebook.  So, that’s exactly what I did last weekend.  It’s now available in the Kindle store on Amazon for only $0.99.  It’s still available as a pdf download here for free, if that’s what you want, but I know some would rather have it directly on their reader.  It’s also been made available in the epub format (free) on Smashwords.

Shane Ede

I started this blog to share what I know and what I was learning about personal finance. Along the way I’ve met and found many blogging friends. Please feel free to connect with me on the Beating Broke accounts: Twitter and Facebook.

You can also connect with me personally at Novelnaut, Thatedeguy, Shane Ede, and my personal Twitter.

www.beatingbroke.com

Filed Under: Credit Score, ShareMe, Site News Tagged With: amazon kindle, beating broke, Credit Score, credit score guide, kindle

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