March Madness Madness

There are two ways in which I am handicapped in my analysis of today’s numerical fiction candidate.

First, I don’t like basketball. I’m not sure why. I’ve been accused of being off  the deep end about baseball and I’ll catch the occasional football and hockey game, but basketball does nothing for me. I never liked playing it as a kid, even during that brief window when I was taller than my friends.

Second, I do not have a job.

So I lack much in the way of personal experience to help me understand what is apparently a GDP-threatening scourge, the annual NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. It seems that employed basketball fans, who make up a surprisingly large proportion of the population, will waste enough work time to cost their employers $1.8 billion in "unproductive wages" in the tournament’s first week alone. Add in the money lost gambling on the games and the hit to e-commerce from the slowdown in internet speeds caused by people watching the games, and you’ve got a serious menace to the economy.

Or so I am told.

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End of February Round Up

Continuing a long tradition that dates back four weeks, I’m using this last day of the week and month to round up a few things I’ve found lately on the interwebs that deserve comment but not whole posts.

Kiyosaki in Canada

The Consumerist asked the other day Is Rich Dad Robert Kiyosaki Getting Rich Off Suckers? Excellent question. Let’s examine it logically.

1. Kiyosaki is rich.

2. What he does for a living is sell books and seminars.

3. Those books and seminars are basically worthless.

4. Purchasers of those books and seminars are therefore suckers.

5. Ergo, Kiyosaki has gotten rich off suckers.

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Is a Fake College Degree Worth Anything?

Earlier this month I asked Is a College Degree Worth Anything? It is a theme I’ve touched on a few times over the past year. (See other posts in the category "College" at right.) In my view college is financially a great deal for some people, and a good deal on average, but at the marginal extreme probably not worth it.

Two recent posts on WalletPop (here and here) raised an interesting follow-up question. Is a fake college degree worth anything?

I am talking about degrees from what are called diploma or degree mills. Deliciously, WalletPop makes a distinction between the terms based on how blatant the fraud is. Diploma mills sell official looking papers for a modest fee. Degree mills make a show of reviewing your "life experience" before selling you official looking papers for a slightly less modest fee, running from several hundred to several thousand dollars.

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Sex, Health, and Wallet Pop

Is Prosper.com a Good Investment?

Almost three years ago I discovered peer to peer lending, in the form of the then widely hyped Prosper.com. For a week or two I was enthusiastic on it as an investment, until I crunched enough numbers to decide it was not so exciting after all. In the meantime, I had put $1000 in ten $100 loan slices.

Loans on Prosper are three years in duration, so next week this little experiment will finally wind down. Assuming that I get the last $15.46 that is owed me, I will have received a grand total of $1029.50 over three years. A zero percent return is pretty lousy, but at least I have the solace that quite a few other things that I could have invested in in January 2007 would have done a lot worse.

But, as it turns out, breaking even makes me an above average lender on Prosper. According to the delightfully data laden Eric’s Credit Community, which tracks and analyses Prosper loan data, the average lender on the site has an ROI of –2.29%. Again, it could have been worse.

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