For those of you with credit card debt or home owner equity debt look for a bigger payment in the next month or two. I’ve never carried credit card debt, but I do have an Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC). So while I’m sure this should encourage me to try to pay off the HELOC quicker than normal, it seems like I could Prosper more by taking a different path.
By my calculations, I’m paying about 5.25% on my HELOC when you count deducting the interest from taxes. The 11.5% that I get after fees from Prosper.com translates to about 8.25% after taxes. That gain of 3% isn’t a lot, because I don’t have a lot of money in there, but maybe I should step it up a bit.