Personal Goals

That's awesome! Nothing better than seeing a new lender experience the enthusiasm we have for Kiva!

Ha! That's Goldy Gopher (University of Minnesota) and Joe Bruin (UCLA), so I guess it's Mr. Gopher and Mr. Bruin.

The real Mrs. Minnesota Buin is currently sharing my account but we should get one setup for her as well.

Are you certain that is not Canucklehead texting you and causing your smartphone to buzz?

Drat, you have found me out!

I would be happy to send you good vibes also. its just takes a phone #!

I am not allowed to have a cellphone due to violating the text vibration protocol once too often. Thank you for the offer.

Great! 6 borrowers you've given a helping hand up to.

Took me 6 months to go from 1 to 2. Well done.

I just made my loan for the 12th. I couldn't find any Timor Leste loans so I looked at the map and saw I didn't have any loans in the Ukraine. I chose Grigoriy. He wants farm equipment and he has his shirt off in the photo.

Good for you. The shirt off picture got to you.

It sure did!

Sex sells!

OK, here's my goal. Just joined on the weekend. Have some catching up to do with y'all. And lots of reading in this forum, but I don't want my lack of time and other procrastination justifications get in the way of doing something useful. So... one loan per day for the rest of the year. Until I get caught up on reading the various threads about people's approaches and strategies, I may just spend five minutes in the morning and "shoot from the hip", but I suppose that's better than just sitting around until I feel I know everything there is to know. There are about 200 days left in the year. Three loans made so far, so I am still on track

Wonderful news! Thank you for joining the team.

A very big welcome to you, HaveMilesWillTravel. That's a fantastic goal to have!

And don't hesitate to ask questions - everyone here is very approachable and friendly...

Thanks for the welcome. I am sure I will have questions.

That's a fantastic goal!!!!!! I vary how I choose my loans. Sometimes by country, sometimes expiring soon. I have even chosen some after searching the keyword beer. The one constant I try to keep is 50/50 male/female percentages. Others will only loan to males or females. There is a group who only loan to people wearing hats. I have chosen a few longer term loans because I have decent payments coming in over the next few months.

As much as we want you to contribute all your loans to our team we understand there will be times that you loan elsewhere. I credit most of my loans to this team but occaisionally credit them to other teams. We are a positive group and welcome all.

Great goal. Please be careful lest you lose control and lend more than you intend to do. Some of us have done that. There is a thread
http://milepoint.com/forums/threads/how-to-chose-loans-and-make-lending-decisions.11414/
that has some advice. There are lots of tools to use too. Because you're planning to make many loans you probably will want to have a fairly specific strategy soon.

I have quite a few loans, but my lending is based on a small number of decision rules that I follow religiously, coupled with quarterly portfolio reviews. If you want to know specific of that just send me a Conversation. OTOH, almost everyone is far less anal-compulsive about lending discipline than am I. One need not be so obsessive to do very well and do a lot of good in the process.

Have fun!

What he said!

That is awesome. I've been on the team for more than a year and i'm still trying to catch up to average.

200 loans is a goal for now and it seems reasonable. Or maybe I should say, considering that I had "Join Kiva" in my ToDo app for ages, it seems part reasonable and part "punishment" for procrastination.

I can see that it could become addictive. I'll make it a point to not pay-as-I-go, but rather fund my account in chunks of, say, $500. That might help. And I am not a gambler.

Yes, for now I just have some vague ideas of what I like and what I don't like (e.g., don't think I want to fund soda stands for a variety of reasons). I've spent a few minutes with the search tools yesterday evening to find a candidate for today's loan.

I have also lurked in some of the Kiva threads on occasions, so I saw some of the discussions, but I'll set some time aside this week to catch up.

Thanks for your offer of advice, I'll probably come back to that at some point. While my immediate goal is to get stuff rolling (the risk of some sub-optimal loans is probably better than procrastinating out of desire for perfection... same with real investments: don't wait with 401k contributions until you've Warren Buffet's smarts).

I've been slow updating my spreadsheet so I hadn't realised I recently passed a significant milestone for total lending.

I am still pushing for 1,000 loans by year end. To do it, I need 60 loans per month. My repayments now support around 50 so I should make it. I also plan on having $10,000 outstanding by year end and am on pace there. I try to balance gender 50/50 and stay within selected segments and countries. I may add a new country in July, but have not picked one yet.

Sorry, couldn't find a more subtle image that didn't include a former president

My goal was one loan each day for the rest of the year since I joined on June 12. By my math, this equals 205 loans.

I am now at 208 loans. There's one more that's still funding. 8 have expired, but I didn't count those. 26 have already been fully paid back.

If my math is right, I need to add a bit more money to my account to basically get it into a self-sustaining balance with roughly a loan per day from repayments.

I am now at 1,128 goals and and doing around 72 new loans each month using repayments. By this time next year I expect to have made 2,000 loans. I stay with $25 loans to spread risk. I am in 24 countries and may add one or two more for next year. My gender mix stays within one loan of 50/50 and will be 50/50 for year end.I stay short term and should I stop, 83% of my outstanding loans would pay-off within six months.

So my 2013 goals are to reach 2,000 loans, add at least one country and and have 95% of my money scheduled back within one year. I expect our team to reach $5 million by Kentucky Derby time, the first Saturday in May.