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This Thanksgiving weekend, we at Lending Club have many blessings to count. Like you, we are thankful for wonderful friends and families, good health, and good prospects for the New Year.

We are privileged to have an active and enthusiastic customer base, including talented lenders who funded $2.6M in loans while making a 12.26% net return (after losses and fees) for themselves, to the benefit of very responsible borrowers who are continuing to build up an outstanding track record of on-time payments. We are grateful for the warm reception we’ve received from the media and especially the blogosphere. Of course, we also appreciate the many Facebook members who embraced us from day one and helped us to get where we are now.

We are particularly thankful for our friends and family members, who haven’t seen much of us over the past six months. Finally, we are grateful for each other. Lending Club has become its own family, and we are so fortunate to have found each other.

From all of us to all of you, we hope you had a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Better Turkey Sandwiches. Together.

In my last article, I wrote about the difference between being cheap and being frugal. Here is how I defined the two.

• Being cheap - You are unwilling to spend money on anything. Even stuff you need. You go out of your way to save money, even when it might not be a great idea.

• Being frugal - You don't waste money. You spend it on things you need, and save it on things you don't.

The difference is mainly that being cheap actually hurts you, while being frugal is typically beneficial and will save you money in the long run.

So how can you determine if an action is cheap or frugal? Ask yourself these questions:

1. How much money are you really saving by not spending some money?

For example, my mom loves to fill empty shampoo bottles with water to make them last longer, rather than just buying a new bottle. How much money is she saving? Maybe a few pennies, because it only saves us the cost of one or two showers.

If you are going to buy a cheaper item, how much is the price difference between the more expensive and the less expensive items? Is the difference very small?

2. What is the difference, qualitatively, by spending less money?

If you were planning on buying a book, and decided to save money by buying a cheaper book, what is the difference in the quality? If you are buying a piece of clothing, is the more expensive one significantly better in quality or aesthetics? For example, I had to buy a wallet, and I paid $10 extra to get one that was inlaid with a sweet red cloth. Although it was $10 extra, I smile every single time I pull out the wallet---I consider it $10 well spent.

3. What are the long-term negatives of saving that money?

Buying books is a great example of this---if you save $20 on a book that could have potentially given you a great idea, did you actually save money? Sometimes, spending money is an investment. A book can give you an idea, an investment can get you a monetary return, and money spent can become money earned.

We at Lending Club want you to save money as part of your overall financial plan. Put some money into different types of saving and investment vehicles including P2P loans on Lending Club. If you want to spend a few extra dollars to get a nice pair of shoes, that's okay. Just make sure you aren't spending enough to ruin your finances.

Online price comparisons have been around for quite some time. Services such as Google Product Search (formerly known as Froogle), Shopzilla, and Amazon have long allowed consumers to find the best price of nearly any product or service. While I strongly recommend using such a service before making any purchase, all of these services lack one feature desired by the average consumer: portability.

You want portable price comparisons because you’re often at a store where an item is on sale when you’d like to compare its price. While smart phones and portable Internet access devices do solve this problem to some extent, not everyone has the latest devices, or wishes to pay for premium data access services. While there are other ways to access some of the data (such as through text messaging to Google Product Search) a new service provides a more complete solution that everyone with a cell phone (or within reach of a pay phone) can use for free.

The service is provided by Frucall. It’s been around since last year but is really gaining in popularity of late. What makes it work so well is that it incorporates all three of the cell phone access methods: mobile web, text messaging, and voice. The last access method is the big differentiator, since as I mentioned earlier, text and mobile web access are available at other sites.

So how does it work? Let’s say you’re at the store and see a great price on a product that you’re interested in buying. By calling Frucall (1-888-DO-FRUCALL or 1-888-363-7822) and entering the UPC for the product (or ISBN code for books), they’ll read a list of available prices from online retailers. You can also enter your zip code to get prices including shipping. There are other options as well, such as purchasing the item, but that’s not really where I see the value of the service. Preventing you from overpaying for an item because you don’t have comparable price information is the real problem that Frucall solves.

Just as we recommend using P2P loans from Lending Club when looking for an affordable financing source, we want you to get the best possible price for other products and services. Especially around the holidays, when every penny counts, using a price comparison website before you go shopping is a smart move. For any items that you haven’t researched before heading to the stores, using Frucall, or a similar service, is an effective way to ensure that an apparently “great deal” really is.

How many of us will overeat again today? With the variety and quantity of food that is often available, it’s hard to imagine a Thanksgiving when we didn’t eat to the point of nearly making ourselves sick. While we may give in to such temptations a few times a year, we can all agree that such overindulgence in food on a regular basis would likely be detrimental to our health. In a similar way, repeated overindulgence in spending can have significant consequences to our financial well being.

This is the time of year when spending can start to get out of control. It seems like there is a sale going on from now until the end of the year, at least. We see so many other people out at the stores doing their holiday shopping that we may want to join in the fun. Unless you’re of a particularly frugal mindset, and feel the subsequent pain of spender’s guilt, spending money probably makes you feel good. Spending money on other people may make you feel even better, since there’s joy associated with generosity as well.

Remember that spending money is not necessarily a problem. It’s spending more than you can afford that leads to trouble. I recommend planning your holiday spending ahead of time. You can create a mini-budget if you like. List all of the people you hope to buy for and allocate an amount of money that you will spend on each. You should try to overestimate each expense, or include an extra category for people that you may have forgotten or if gifts end up costing more than you anticipated. Having a plan may not make it any easier to find the perfect gifts, but seeing the numbers in black and white may help you to avoid the “one more helping of stuffing isn’t going to make things worse” mentality. Every purchase adds to the financial burden that the holidays can bring.

Ideally, your holiday spending should not exceed the remaining unspent amount in your gift category of your regular budget, which you hopefully have. If you do overindulge in your spending this year, or if your current debt makes even reasonable spending beyond your means, try to refrain from turning to credit cards to fund your holidays. Lending Club’s rates on person-to-person loans will probably be much more affordable. Having a person-to-person loan will give you a set amount of cash upfront which may help you to limit your spending. While the pain of a large meal - or sporadic shopping trip - can usually be overcome, surviving regular such occurrences is much less likely.

What a busy couple of months it’s been! Everyone at Lending Club is thrilled to have grown our community so fast since our public launch slightly over two months ago.

I always mention how important your feedback and comments are to us, but the last couple of months have been particularly helpful to Lending Club and your fellow members. We have met several lenders in person, as well as communicated with others via their blogs, email and through member support. In addition, many happy borrowers have spontaneously provided testimonials and feedback on their Lending Club experiences.

Here are some of the functionality enhancements you have been requesting that are now available at www.lendingclub.com:

Multiple Accounts: You can now open several accounts and enjoy the following benefits:

Both a Borrower and a Lender Be: It is now possible to be both a lender and a borrower, either concurrently or consecutively.

Apply for Multiple Loans: You can now submit multiple loan requests if your credit profile allows it and if your total indebtedness (including loans that are still “in funding”) remains within our credit policy guidelines.

Note that your borrower/lender accounts are considered separate, thus you will need to use a different email address for each account you open, and for the protection of your account, you will need to go through the verification and authentication process each time you open a new account.

Check out our Performance Statistics: In an effort to be as open as possible about the performance of the Lending Club community, we are committing to publish performance data weekly. You can see the first edition of this page here. Congratulations to Lending Club borrowers for their outstanding on-time payment record thus far, with no defaults and only 2 late payments (although less than 30 days late) currently after 6 months of operation.

Ask the Borrower a Question: How many times have you had a burning question you'd like to ask before lending to a particular borrower? Now you can ask any borrower a question regarding an active listing. Borrowers will see your question privately and, if answered, both your question and the borrower’s response will be published on the borrower’s loan details page for the benefit of all lenders.

Make Yourself and Your Friends $25 Richer: Many of you have taken advantage of our $5 referral bonus to date. To sweeten the deal, we have increased this to $25 for both you and your friend for each loan application or funded lender's account resulting from a referral. In addition, if your friend transfers an initial deposit of more than $1,000 to start lending, we will increase the bounty to $50 for both parties. Moreover, we have made inviting friends easier: you can now type in your friends’ email addresses manually in addition to being able to import your webmail contacts. If you prefer, you can send a referral link around, or publish it on your site. Here it is:
https://secure.lendingclub.com/refer.action?referrer=YourScreenName

Just remember to replace YourScreenName with... well.... your Lending Club screen name.

Update Your Profile: You can now update your personal profile information (name, address, email, etc.), as well as your affiliations (add, delete, etc.).

Change Your Bank Account: It is now possible to change your bank account. To protect the security of your account, you will need to provide your old account number and password.

Continue sending us your comments, questions and recommendations. We love to hear them.

Better Site. Together.