I’m currently settled down in Budapest through mid-January, and given the severe weather in Europe I’m incredibly glad I don’t need to be traveling right now. I’m enjoying the beautiful snowy weather, the lovely Christmas market, and most of all the delicious and affordable food!
Being settled in and starting to look at my 2011 budget have led me to create a new investment account with Lending Club, a peer to peer lending service which has been around for a few years. (Moneydance is not affiliated with Lending Club, they’re just a company I as an individual do business with.)
First, I created a custom investment type. To do this I went to the “Add Security” interface, set the Type to “Other”, and clicked the horizontal arrow next to the Subtype field. This brings me to an interface where I created a custom subtype by clicking the + button. (If you use Tags this interface will look familiar to you.) You can also create custom subtypes of other investment categories- stocks, mutual funds, etc.
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Now I’ll create a new Security for the first loan I’ll be funding. To do so I open my account, click the Actions button, and select the Add Security button. I then click the “New Security” button, create the new security, assign my custom sub-type to it, and I’m ready to enter my transactions. Because Lending Club allows me to fund several separate loans in small amounts, I’ll track each loan individually so I can have a targeted rate of return. I’ll be able to use my custom subtype to get an overview of how the investments are performing as a whole.
{% photo LC-Loan-1.jpg %}
Next week I’ll talk more about using the Hungarian forint (my 5th currency of the trip for those of you who are counting) as well as discuss how I interact with the iPod app when I’m using multiple currencies.