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Beat the US Recession by Investing With Zopa and Me

Posted by Stuart at 04:01 PM on March 22, 2008

Continuing the theme from the last couple of days, I am in "thankful" mode for how good the past few years have been for me living as an expat in Thailand. Another area of my life that has been going well is my finances. Now I am by no means rich (by American standards... it's all relative isn't it?), but at least I am not getting any poorer. I have been able to make a livable salary and continue to pay off debts over the past few years. For example, my college loans will be completely paid off this year. (And that only took me TEN YEARS to get rid of! Yes!)

But let me stop here, because in all honesty, that last paragraph should have been written in past tense. Over, those last ten years since graduation, I have steadily worked myself into a better financial situation. However, that has come to an abrupt halt for me in 2008. One US dollar used to buy me 42 baht, whereas now I can barely get 30. (That means my cost of living has gone up a stunning 28% percent over the past year or so.) My stock portfolio has been getting pounded as well, of course. Likewise, my renewable CDs are getting 2+% interest when they used to get 5+%.

And when I read the news about the American economy, I can see that I am not the only one in this situation. Thankfully I don't have an expensive mortgage at the moment. I am guessing that most people reading this might be facing a similar scenario.

So... I want to offer everyone a novel way to invest your money. It will give you a decent guaranteed rate of return (relatively speaking, for these times), and the bonus is that it will help out me and my fledgling start-up a little bit. Let me explain:

Over the Christmas holidays, I took out a small loan online through a website called Zopa to give me a little cusion in financing my start-up company. Zopa is basically a loan broker that finds customers like me for Credit Bureaus like the one I eventually signed up with.

The cool, revolutionary thing about Zopa, though, is that other people (like you) can invest in a CD through their website. When you do this, you select a Zopa customer (like me) who then gets a reduction on the interest rate for their loan.

The best part about it for you is that Zopa is currently offering the highest interest rate in the U.S. for their CDs. The rate is currently 4.25% APY for a one-year CD. They say that it's not going to last thanks to the Fed's rate reduction this past week, so if you are looking for a good investment in this uncertain time, I recommend checking out Zopa ASAP.

If you are at all interested in this offer or interested to learn more about the interesting new business model at Zopa, please click the yellow button below. This should take you to my profile page (my nickname is "farang"). Once you are there, you can click on the "Help Now" button to help me and my company (and lock yourself in to a good interest rate too!)