Seven Quick Takes

--- 1 ---

How long have you been blogging?  I've had this blog for nine and a half years.  I started it because I knew other people who had them and I wanted to try my hand at blogging.  I like to write, I spent a lot of time on AOL message boards (I know most of you aren't old enough to remember those) and I thought it would be fun to have a place to write what I wanted where the world could read it.  For some reason, the world did not rush to my corner of the web.  Eventually I turned into a book blogger and while I can't say the world has beaten a path to my door, I do have regular readers and some of my posts are clicked on pretty regularly from search engines.

--- 2 ---

As I said, I've been a book blogger (not exclusively, but mainly) since 2007.  As a book blogger I am blessed with the opportunity to obtain far more free review copies of book than I will ever have time to read.  However, lately, I've cut back on the requests and the books.  I have a stack of books that caught my eye at one point or another than I've just never gotten around to reading, and I'm not excited about reading them, or much of anything.

--- 3 ---

I started blogging about my experience with Lending Club.  For those who haven't heard about it, Lending Club is a peer to peer lender.  If you want to borrow money, you can go to their website and apply for a loan.  If you are approved, the loan is put out for investors to buy portions of it.  If I want to invest $1,000, I could choose to loan it all to you on the basis of the profile Lending Club publishes about you, or I could buy $25 worth of interest in 40 different loans.  Lending Club suggests the latter.  That way, if you turn out to be a deadbeat, I'm out $25, not $1000 and the chances of all 40 people to whom I am loaning money turning out to be deadbeats is low.

--- 4 ---

Here are my Lending Club posts:  Lending Club:  My New Toy, Lending Club:  How I Invested My Money, Buying Notes on Lending Club:  Old or New?  Lending Club:  How to Sell Notes  Lending Club:  Month Two and Lending Club One Month Later

--- 5 ---

We are about ten years from retirement, and unlike most folks our age, we have a ten year old.  We've started working with a financial adviser and are trying to get our ducks in a row, so to speak.  I was thinking about starting a blog to talk about it (and maybe make some of that passive income I keep reading about on investment blogs).  

--- 6 ---

My college daughter is home for fall break (no class on Thursday or Friday) and her sister is thrilled.  I'm glad to see her too.  

--- 7 ---

My autistic son has a job and it looks like it is going to work out.   He is working in food service at the Superdome/Arena.  On weeks they have home games he works about 25 hours; other weeks, quite a bit less.  He is 22 and this is his first job; I'm hoping it leads to better jobs in the future.

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