I have mentioned before that I am a big fan of the Lending Club IRA. I rolled over all of my wife’s 401(k)’s and other IRA’s into Lending Club last year. Now, I am opening a new IRA in my own name. So, I thought I would create a short video and share with everybody how simple it is.
Now here are a couple of things to keep in mind if you are thinking about a Lending Club IRA:
- Your paperwork and check need to received at Lending Club by April 15, 2011 to be eligible to open a 2010 IRA.
- Your IRA will be “No-Fee” (as in free) if you open your account with $5,000. To maintain the “No fee” status you need to kick in more money next year to ensure your balance is above $10,000 after 12 months.
- You can open a Traditional IRA, a Roth IRA or a SEP IRA.
I believe everyone, if at all possible, should use an IRA instead of a regular taxable account when investing at Lending Club. You don’t have to deal with all the hassles of working out your peer to peer lending taxes and your money grows tax free. And the process is so simple. The video is just over five minutes and the whole process from start to finish took me about ten minutes. Here’s the video.
For Prosper investors at this time unfortunately you do not have an option to open an IRA there. If you want to use a retirement account for your p2p lending investments then Lending Club is your only option.
One last tip, when writing your check you need to make it out to SD IRA Services FBO [your name]. This part is not made clear on the application so I thought I should clarify here.
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Peter Renton is the chairman and co-founder of LendIt Fintech, the world’s first and largest digital media and events company focused on fintech. Peter has been writing about fintech since 2010 and he is the author and creator of the Fintech One-on-One Podcast, the first and longest-running fintech interview series. Peter has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Times, CNBC, CNN, Fortune, NPR, Fox Business News, the Financial Times, and dozens of other publications.
