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Venmo Looks Ready to Take Victory Lap in P2P RacePartnering Up with LendingTree!
I'm excited to announce that DepositAccounts has been acquired by LendingTree, Inc. First, I want to assure you that DepositAccounts will still be the same DepositAccounts that you have (hopefully!) grown to love. The blog, the forum, the tables and all the other parts of the site aren’t going anywhere.
In addition, I’m not going anywhere. I’ve been passionate about deposit accounts since the early 1980s as I grew up watching the magic of compound interest on a 10-year 16% CD that my parents purchased before interest rates started to fall. That passion led me to start the BankDeals blog in 2005 and to join the partnership in 2009 that created DepositAccounts.
My passion for deposit accounts continues as this new partnership with LendingTree begins. I will continue in the same capacity overseeing the overall content on DepositAccounts and will of course continue to do my regular blog postings. In addition, the small team behind DepositAccounts is staying on, and we all remain committed to keeping the site as the best deposit account resource on the Web.
This new partnership with LendingTree will allow us to add more resources to improve DepositAccounts with more content and tools and with broader exposure on the Web. The improvements will only add to the usefulness of DepositAccounts to help savers find the best deals. The rock-bottom interest rates of the last eight years have made it difficult for savers to earn a decent amount on their savings. In this hopefully rising rate environment, many new opportunities should open up for savers, and we’re committed to helping our users find those opportunities to earn more on their hard-earned savings.
Wonder if there is any "Truth of Acquisition" for the Lending Tree's acquisition of Deposit Accounts?
I'm sure Lending Tree ought to have made plans to "monetize" this acquisition. We will need to wait and see what negative impact (if any) such a plan will have on the readers/contributors?
I have not needed to borrow money for nearly fifty years. I had to Google Lending Tree to learn what it is. It seems OK, but I'm really not in a position to judge. I hope this works out.
Wow, I would have sold for that too.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lendingtree-acquires-depositaccountscom-300474447.html
My mediocre wealth has been great fun.
I hope the first thing Lending Tree does is get rid of Anonymous posers.
KEN--CONGRATUALTIONS--AND THANKS FOR CONTINUING IN AN ATTEMPT TO RETAIN THE HIGH QUALITY AND INTEGRITY OF YOUR SITE--YOU SHOULD BE VERY PROUD
The Yelp reviews are not encouraging. 29 one star reviews.
The general complaint is that once people provide contact information they get slammed with calls and emails from third-party vendors with absolutely no way of stopping the lenders from continued contact.
And, they REQUIRE your phone number to get loan quotes.
Hopefully, this site doesn't go down the same rabbit hole.
Ken, I'd like my profile to be deleted.
I really don't want my email address slammed with junk mail from the new owners.
Thanks for all the rate information.
If I remember correctly, original pfbloggers ConsumerismCommentary (Luke Landes) and Bargaineering (Jim ****) sold their sites for millions within the past 8 years, and over time, the new owners' content deteriorated.
Looking for borrowers at deposit accounts will be a poor choice, unless they take over deposit accounts and make it into borrowing accounts web site.
It's not just the ads. Forum posters give "sneak peeks" at hot deals across the country. Forum posters find specials that ordinary mortals might never find. These tips lead to more new money accounts. For example, would I ever had known about Navy Federal's expanded FOM without the forum? Probably not.
Sounds like time for a "Guest Post" on his own blog about how he did it. What could others replicate in other industries and even if not ever get to $1MM, they could probably get to $100/mo which could be quite helpful for many.
It would seem to be be a valuable investment of time to "chase" something like that while you are chasing CD rates.
cd :O)
The concern with the new owners is possible breach of that arrangement. Any such breach, once discovered and made generally known, will manifestly reduce the number of eyeballs here daily. I hope the new owners of this site comprehend that. I hope the people at Lending Tree realize it is the trust relationship between Ken and his readers which has propelled this website to greatness. Should that trust be breached in future, Lending Tree will have spent millions for a giant nothing burger.
Furthermore Ken's website (or blog, however you want to consider it), at the present time, must have about the lowest "negatives" and the highest "positives" ratings of any site I have ever seen. We all hope that will continue. (And, wouldn't it be wonderful if our politicians were like that!)
Again, well-stated. The concept of a website's integrity is crucial. Before Ken came on the scene, we had Bankrate, and a few other minor players, but one always had this nagging suspicion of "pay-to-play". Were you seeing the best deals, or just the deals that folks wanted you to see? Ken turned the business model around. He scoured the internet for the best deals, and posted them. Dang the torpedoes, full speed ahead. He opened a Forum for folks to post deals he might have missed. That Forum is alive and kicking today.
I am just glad he was able to monetize his hard work. Lending Tree is not a bad outfit. My wife actually owns four shares (it's a long story, and has to do with IACI spin-offs). Barry Diller has excellent people working for him, and I am confident this site (and Ken) will continue to be industry-leaders.
That said, it might be wise to diversify the proceeds. Hard to make a buck these days in CDs.
Remember "white flower day at Macy's"? Was that news?
Of course not. Everybody finally figured out every day was "white flower day" at Macy's, and the promotion fizzled. So did Macy's.
I was told by a friend to get it but stupid me I passed.
The bad part, it would be coming due this year...
I was just getting started in stocks back then and couldn't have invested much in a 30 year bond.
I did VERY well my first 15 years in the stock market. Not so well the last 10-15. I think I took bigger risks when I was younger and when I stopped, my returns went down dramatically.
But, money is not a concern for me nowadays beyond the poor returns I get for a too big chunk of it.
It is rather difficult to turn off being a tightwad though.
People who saved all their lives thought they would live retirement using the interest from their savings. Now they try to calculate how much principle they can spend every year to last the next 20 years. No one saw that coming..
Are there any sites that give details about the deals from various financial institutes?
Asking this, just to make a provision if the Lending Tree's depositeaccount site stops being useful.
That said, I will state the obvious:
The Lending Tree announcement is now public information. Other people with an interest in Ken's field have certainly taken notice of, what was for Ken, a wonderful money-making opportunity. There will be, among such persons, a few just waiting for this website to stumble, to stop serving its readers as in past years. They then will jump at the opportunity to serve the need Ken has always served. But so long as standards here remain high I do not believe any competitor has a chance to break through and steal clicks. Ken has this niche sewed up for as long as he wants provided quality of service remains where it is today.
If you knew, for example, there were two or three "hot deals" in your locale, what were the odds they'd pop up on Bankrate? Credit unions seemed routinely excluded.
Plug in just about any search for "certificate of deposit" a decade or more ago, weren't all that many options. Those which popped up were, invariably, pay-to-play aggregators. We mere mortals were left to scrounge in the Sunday paper.
But I'm a bit curious what synergies that Lending Tree sees here ? Do they plan on getting into the deposit hawking business ? Are they already ? What % of your readers have debt ?
Glad that you are hanging around. Need a sober person to keep me from being banned for life if I bring up the fact that marketable securities are acceptable to mention from time to time. Like SO and its 4.5% yield.
I guess my brother still has mortgage debt but I think he has some kind of deal where he pays all the extra whenever he wants and can also write a check if he needs extra cash. So I doubt he hangs out here. (Maybe in 5-10 years when he gets the house paid off) But that's exactly too late for Lending Tree. Unless they plan a push into Deposit Tree.
Lending Tree might be able to eliminate the middle-man, so to speak. My wife always calls it the "Amazon" business model.
Squeeze margins, drive banks and credit unions out of the business of lending, in a decade or so, it will be called Lending Wheee!
As savers, the single biggest impediment to higher yields we face is overhead. Who pays for all those loan officers and branch managers? We do.
So the $33 million they paid for DA is just tiny by comparison.
Its interesting to think about what might happen. I kind of like the idea of borrowers bidding for my deposit dollars. But we don't have a single institution price matching what we can get elsewhere yet. So there is a ton of room for improvement.
As a test, I went & played at Lending tree as if I was interested in borrowing on a house.
Cant get very far without giving out personal info.
My guess is 5 years from now, most of us wont be happy with the changes here.
Is anyone happy that Capital One took over ING ? I still have a total of 2 cents on deposit. One penny for each account. And I'm losing patience with them.
Must be the same for quite a few others , considering what they coughed up. ;-)