Are you interested in getting a bonus? Lobbying for a bonus can be one of the most difficult and scary things that you have to do in life---I know that I’ve always been scared to take the leap and ask my boss about a raise or a bonus. In many cases, however, it’s necessary.

When you know that you deserve a bonus for the excellent work that you’ve done, the best thing you can do is talk to your boss about it. Depending on how much you receive, a bonus---especially an unexpected bonus---can really add to your savings. If you are willing to put in all the money you get from a bonus into your Roth IRA, you can max out your contribution for the year, just with money you weren’t even planning on having. You can also use your bonus to invest in P2P loans on Lending Club and earn great rates of return on that money.

However, as you probably know, asking for a bonus is an incredibly difficult task. Asking for money is one thing that no one really ever teaches---how do you go about it? What are you supposed to say?

Fortunately, there is a great article from The Wall Street Journal on this very subject that offers great advice. For example, the first step is to know your goals. Do you know what your company expects from you? Ask them! Make sure you know what you are expected to do, because meeting unknown goals is almost impossible, but meeting specific goals is doable. By having specific goals, it’s a lot easier to meet them, and in doing so, earn your bonus.

The article also recommends that you check up on your progress with your company as time passes. At my last company, my boss and I met weekly to discuss my progress towards my goals. Doing this really helped focus me on what I needed to do, and it helped me earn my bonus.

Read the article and ask yourself, “What do I need to do to achieve the bonus I desire?” Often, all it takes is a little conversation and a little work to make your dreams come true.

As we often deal with isolated transactions in our financial lives, it’s easy to get caught up in the minutia of personal finance. It’s important to periodically take a step back and think about things from a broader perspective, at which time we might even realize that wealth ranks pretty low on our list of priorities.

One of the reasons to take a big picture look at wealth is that it is such a broad subject. We need to consider things like savings, investments, real estate, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, retirement plans, college funds, trust funds, insurance, and asset protection just to name a few. More and more people could add P2P loan portfolios from Lending Club to that list as well. The point is that there’s so much to think about that we often just ignore any desires to try to get a handle on everything.

While it’s true that it may be too much to think about all of the financial topics in our lives concurrently, it is important to realize the interconnectivity of many of these topics. For example, we can’t fully understand our savings plans without considering how they are supplemented by retirement and college savings plans as well as insurance. Looking at investments without considering their accompanying risk poses a similar problem.

Of course, there is an even bigger picture than our financial lives to consider, namely how finances play into our overall lives. Most people aren’t looking for financial security for the satisfaction that a stockpile of wealth may bring. Rather, they see that security as a way to enjoy the things that are important to them. There are certainly many more important things in life than money, but building wealth is a means by which to have the time and resources to more fully enjoy those things that are important to us.

You wouldn’t think to place sensitive personal information in an unsecured public place. If you did so, the last thing you would want to do is bring attention to the fact that the information was there. Yet that’s what many people do each day when they place their outgoing mail in the mailbox and raise the little red flag.

Outgoing mail is often more sensitive than incoming mail. In addition to account information, outgoing bills usually contain a check as well. With the routing and account number information provided on every check, stealing one outgoing bill can give an identity thief a significant amount of information about you. Credit card bills obviously provide even more information.

There are a number of things that you can do to protect your mail. First, consider paying your bills online. With threats like the one descried in this post, you may find that online transactions are much safer than real-world ones. Plus, paying online leaves an electronic record of the transaction, something that paying by mail does not do.

Second, you can use a post office or USPS mailbox to drop off your outgoing mail. Your bills will drop securely into the box in either case, away from the prying hands of a potential thief.

Third, try to reduce the number of bills that you have. If you have multiple credit cards, each one will have another bill, and subsequently another source of potential theft. You can use a P2P loan from Lending Club to consolidate your debt and reduce the number of bills that you send and receive each month, and save yourself a lot of money in addition to enjoying a monthly payment amount that remains constant.

Lastly, you may want to use a PO Box or mailbox service instead of having a mailbox at your house. That’s less convenient and will cost a nominal fee, but if it offers protection from identity theft then it may be worth it. Because incoming mail is also a target for thieves, using such a service helps to protect you. I use a mailbox service (from the UPS Store) versus a PO Box so that packages can be accepted there as well. This type of service is also more convenient since shippers will not deliver to a PO Box.

It’s sad to think that something as seemingly benign as sending out a bill could lead you down the path towards identity theft. It’s often the overlooked aspects of our lives that are the most easily exploited. Protect your mail, both incoming and outgoing, and you’ll be protecting your identity at the same time.

In his article entitled 5 Ways to Maximize Your Tax Savings Now, Marshall Loeb started out by suggesting that you can get part of your tax refund early by filing a new W4 with your employer to reduce your deductions.

If you are one of the majority of taxpayers that normally gets an income tax refund each year, this is a simple method to get a boost in your paycheck towards the end of the year. The extra money that you get now will obviously reduce the amount that you get back as a refund later, but it may help you to avoid using credit cards to fund your holiday purchases. Of course you could also use a P2P loan from Lending Club for this purpose.

When it comes to income taxes, some people like a big refund. They see it as a sort of automated savings plan because the money is taken out of each paycheck before they see it, so they don’t really miss it. If you’re in this group, consider increasing your 401K contributions or enrolling in an interest-earning automatic savings plan. On the other extreme, some people pay estimated taxes on a quarterly basis. I do this to cover any expected tax on capital gains from investment sales as well as self-employment taxes.

In an ideal world, everyone’s income tax refund would be zero. That would occur if they paid just the right amount of taxes during the year. Owing too much at the end of the year could lead to penalties, while getting a big refund allows the government to use your money during the year interest-free instead of putting it to your own good use.

If you do file a new W4 to reduce your deductions for the rest of the year, be sure to change things back at the beginning of next year. Failure to do so could leave you with a large tax bill at the end of next year.

LendingClub.com Leads Industry with Better Rates for Borrowers

SUNNYVALE, CA – December 13, 2007 – Caught in the wake of the credit crisis, people in every community across America are looking for alternatives to traditional banks and credit institutions to help meet their financial needs. Lending Club, the rapidly growing affinity-based social lending network that launched its people-to-people lending services six months ago to facilitate personal loans based on affinities or an individual's social connections, today announced its availability to lenders and borrowers in all 50 states. For the first time, everyone nationwide can use Lending Club's P2P lending services and enjoy better interest rates than those offered by traditional banks or credit cards.

"We believe an affinity-based model enables people to get better rates by leveraging their existing associations and social connections. All early indicators suggest that this approach is succeeding: We have the lowest rates available to borrowers and the best average returns for lenders in the industry, which is made possible by lower defaults" said Renaud Laplanche, founder and CEO of Lending Club. "Today, we're extending this model across all 50 states, so people can connect online, build trust and gain financial benefit on both sides of the lending and borrowing equation."

Over the course of the last six months, LendingClub.com lenders have earned an average 12.2 percent annualized return after fees and losses, and defaults on the loans have remained under one percent, which is attributed to the sense of community and trust inherent in the existing connections between members, such as their online social networks, alumni associations, organizations, geography and credit profiles.

LendingClub.com members have loaned and borrowed more than $3.5 million within the network, growing 100 percent monthly since it launched six months ago. In response to this rapidly increasing demand, Lending Club is expanding today to all 50 states and is now available at www.lendingclub.com, on social networking site Facebook and through partnerships with top university alumni associations.

To help people identify lending and borrowing opportunities, Lending Club uses its proprietary affinity-matching technology, LendingMatch™, which looks at factors such as where people went to school, where they grew up, what they do for a living and their network associations. LendingMatch is the fastest way to build diversified portfolios based on these affinities and ensure the creditworthiness of each borrower.

LendingClub.com is open to individual borrowers with credit scores at or above 640 and a debt-to-income ratio of 30 percent or less. Using LendingClub.com, borrowers can apply for personal loans of $500 to $25,000 to be funded by one or many individual lenders. Lending Club handles user authentication, bank account verification, credit checking, credit reporting, funds transfers and collections.