Personal Goals

My loans stretch to July of 2014 but only 33 of 158 outstanding go for more than a year. Should I ever need to cash out, 90% of my investment would be repaid within one year. I do this by mostly staying short term but do some US and Israeli lending where terms tend to exceed two years.

At the moment I am happy with any loan that is going to be repaid by the end of 2012. That way I can loan to some of the loans that are likely to expire unfunded. Initially I started looking at only those loans with the shorter loan periods and that was helpful in giving me repayments to reinvest. For example in Jan my repayments are $300 and in Feb are $370. I think I have 88 loans repaying in Feb but come December 2012 I only have something repaying.

I am sticking to my plan of doing a loan a day with the hope that I can build up my funds to the stage that I will have enough repayments on a monthly basis to fund that daily loan.

my goal for now is simply to prove to the AASFSHN that we are not a 'flash in the pan' as some have claimed. I know this isn't about competing against each other so much as helping others, but let's continue to provide them with some healthy competition for the long haul.

What's AASFSHN?

And I know it's not the reason why we do this, but I want to see MilePoint on the leaderboard each month, since it will hopefully bring more members onto our Kiva team and also new members to MilePoint!

Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious

I've already posted this in the million dollar thread but I'm cross posting over here because I'm all excited plus I started this thread I pledged $75 for the million dollar loan and added in my monthly $25 loan thinking I would spend $100. I found a loan for $125 so I funded it myself. Yep. there's a loan which just has my name on it.

Ok, I'll stop showing off but I feel so good.

Very good! I did one of those, too, some months ago.
There is even a team called the lone lenders:
http://www.kiva.org/team/lone_lenders
So, you are not alone, even though you are the only lender on that loan.

It's indeed a special think to fund a loan solo. Glad you've discovered the magic!

And thanks for the team plug, M&S.

I am also a member of that team, and I don't recall anyone there saying something like that about the Milepoint team. I've only read comments that many members there want to be up higher on the charts than the Milepoint team. And I think that is great. A friendly competition will hopefully inspire both teams to lend more. That's a great win for Kiva, and I personally think it is kind of exciting. You never know which team will wind up on top at the end of each month, or during the month.

It was just one person that said it, but it was said

I was a member then, but left it.

I think any comments I have heard from others re: the MP team have been encouraging. We have received support from FofBH and LLL, and congratulations from NYC, AASFSHN and Lotus for the amount of lending we are doing. AASFSHN is by far the largest team and has lent the most and I am sure the team Captains were surprised by our lending prowess and wanted to encourage his team to continue lending in a friendly challenge -- no harm or insult was intended.

Let's continue to lend as we can and hope it inspires others to do likewise!

That is exactly my goal, just to help us grow and not be a flash in the pan

It wasn't one of their Captains, they have been encouraging/competitive spirited.

I think the whole Kiva community is in awe of team Milepoint. And although there seems to be a very small percentage of people who feel the need to make negative comments about just about anything, that is true of any large group. (As I like to say: no good deed will go unpunished.) But the vast majority are simply interested in seeing Kiva and the borrowers succeed. And there's only one way to make that happen, which is to lend. Every loan counts, and if a team helps to encourage lending (as this team clearly does) that's all to the good. I don't think anyone can find fault with that.

Happy lending!

I am actually surprised there have not been more such comments; a tribute to the generosity of spirit among Kiva people whatever their teams are.

It is quite natural to wonder if anybody in any arena suddenly appears, as if from nowhere, and performs exceptionally well.

More so when milepoint is itself about the same age as our young team. How can anybody not wonder if/how we can keep our momentum going? I know I do. Still, we are developing a powerful attraction to milepoint and Kiva. Milepoint itself, IIRC Randy's recent comments at the OWMD launch party, has grown far more than did FlyerTalk at a comparable period.

My personal view is that there is no other situation quite like ours. Without naming names, although we all probably know most of these by now;
1) an aspiring graduate student now working in a very poor country matched loans of everyone back in March. He thought he could get almost all of his money back if he needed it for school. How wonderful is that? How many times has anything like that happened before?
2) Lots of people who have very limited incomes that they manage to stretch with milepointers ideas have allocated regular money to Kiva. One does not ordinarily think of those people are typical frequent flyers, but we have a growing number of them.
3) Quite a large number fo people are making Kiva loans for children, grandchildren, nephews/nieces and friends. Who would have imagined that happening for frequent travelers?
4) Then there are a number of us who have converted other investments to the milepoint Kiva team. One year ago that would not have been imagined. Now we keep finding more people who are doing that.
5) Lastly comes the first two. When Randy and the Founders establishing milepoint they began with the premise that milepoint should have a charitable focus, which began during the beta phase. Who would imagine that from a frequent flyer affinity site? Almost instantly came Nils (nime01) to form our team, and all the rest has folowed...

Sorry to be so long-winded. It seems to me the story of milepoint and our Kiva team is so improbable that anybody can be excused for thinking we will not last. We could even be the Douglas Adams memorial team when thinking of all those improbable good things happening together.

Great summary jbcarioca.

Let me add one more to your fine list of points:
6) Somehow people with different perspectives, preferences and ideas have continued to work together for the greater good of Kiva and of the Milepoint Kiva team. And we done so despite the fact that most of us do not know each other outside this forum. For me this has been amazing and inspiring. We don't really have a "leader", at least not in the sense of one person who guides us. Instead we have a host of great examples who inspire us. We don't really know where we headed, yet we still keep lending and lending and lending. And we keep sharing great ideas as we inspire each other on.
For me, I find our team to be full of many small miracles. I'm glad to be along for the ride.

I had two personal goals this week. One related to our 500th member and the other related to my personal financial situation. Both worked out just fine, I am happy to report. As a result i have just gone on a lending spree.

As I write this we are back on the new member leaderboards for Common Interest at #9, welcome to all of you!!

We have $1,048,275 in total loans and $113,200 in new loans this month!
We only need $1,800 in new money before the repayments begin to have $115,000 in new money this month and we'll also have passed $1,050,000 before that happens.

Only 11 days ago we were not expecting anything like this. Let's lend just that $1,800 during the rest of today (It is Sunday at 10:30 for me).

I recognize that this idea is far too modest for our team, so maybe it should be $51,800 instead so we'll pass $1,100,000 before relending begins.

This is a very happy day for me!!

Thanks for your summary, it was good.

This is what I am doing, while I am young and saving up, right now I am not getting large returns in %, so I am converting over to Kiva. While I risk losing some and don't make a % back, at least I am helping far more people than big banks, brokers, and mutual fund managers I think that the people I loan to are much more deserving of those funds that someone that can 'make' a steady 3% on an investment and sometimes losses in risky areas.

I can get far better enjoyment out of this. I also have some contacts for an underserved people group, that is discriminated against by most people and their govt in south america that I am trying to get hooked up into microfinance as well, but at the moment that have more urgent needs like simply having a couple trucks to move goods in and out of their villages.

In gratitude for your lending spree, I have added another loan.

A personal note of thanks for lending in honor of the 500th member!

My next big goal is to invest $10,000 in Kiva. I just passed $8800.
This will allow me to have more than $2000 a month in repayments each month.
My intention is to maintain at least $10,000 in my account and keep the loans rolling.

My next goals are to make 365 loans in 2012 and increase my investment from $2800 to $6,000. Guess that means it's time to go and make another loan in honour of all those who loaned in honour of others. This really is a never ending loaning circle.

I had a personal goal to hit a certain $ milestone by my 1 year anniversary on Kiva. I did manage to achieve that on Thanksgiving Day this year, just a few weeks ahead of schedule.

Now to ponder my personal goal for my 2 year anniversary on Kiva...

Well done, and happy lending!

With today's repayments, our new loans pushed us (Mr and Mrs Horseguy) past 10,000 loans! The next goal is 20,000 loans.

Magnificent!