Skip to main content
Tardus Welcome Packet

Articles and help specific to Tardus clients.

Joey avatar
Written by Joey
Updated this week

Welcome Tardus clients!

We've created this page to help you get started with Groundfloor. The Tardus snowball is a bit different than how our other customers invest, so we have summarized many of your questions here. If you have any other basic questions about Groundfloor, our customer success team is happy to help.

Account Setup

  • Be sure to sign up as a Tardus client here. This gets you on our Tardus list, will give you a signup bonus, and ensure that you get any relevant information or promotions that are focused on Tardus clients. We may add some product features focused on the snowball, and I'd like to be able to email you.

  • Your best option as a new Groundfloor customer is to create an auto investor account and use that for your flips. This is the default experience, so there isn't anything special you need to do.

  • Business accounts: You can invest as a business with Groundfloor. This is an option when you first create your account. If you want a business and personal, or multiple businesses, then each account will need to have its own email address associated with it.

  • Checkbook IRAs: A few people have asked about using a Checkbook IRA (aka Checkbook LLC) to invest in LROs. This is certainly possible, as this is treated just like any other business from Groundfloor's perspective.

  • Groundfloor IRAs: Groundfloor has its own IRA account. This does not currently support the auto investor functionality. You have two options here. You can set up a Groundfloor IRA account and invest manually, or you can set up a checkbook IRA. Your coach can help with the checkbook IRA option.

Investing FAQs

  • What's an LRO? LRO stands for Limited Recourse Obligation. We will use this interchangeably with "loan" although they are not technically the same thing. The LRO is the instrument that we use to sell the loans fractionally to investors. The reason we use the word "loan" is that most people understand what a loan is, but an LRO takes more time to explain. If you'd like to dive into what an LRO is, the best place is to go straight to our offering circular, which has all of the details.

  • Other Groundfloor products: I have specifically focused on using the Auto Investor for the income snowball. I have had a few questions about other products. Your best option is to use our support FAQ to learn more about other products. Our customer success team is also very helpful. You can email them at support@groundfloor.us, or use the support tool on the web or in the app.

  • A few people have asked about loan availability and how long it takes for funds to invest. They are invested as soon as they clear, and typically we have 70-80 loans live on our platform at any given time. This gives you instant diversification, and you start accruing interest immediately.

  • Increased diversification: Some people have asked about increasing diversification beyond the 70-80 loans. Our diversification analysis showed that beyond 50 LROs, there is only marginal benefit to adding more loans. If you would like more diversification, then you can spread your investment out over a few weeks. In a typical week, about 20 LROs close and 20 new ones open up.

Flywheel Portfolio

  • Flywheel Portfolio is our newest investment product. It enables you to invest instantly in hundreds of loans as a single investment. This is perfect for Tardus investors, because it aligns with your goals — invest in something diversified and start getting cash flow quickly.

  • The disbursement curve for Flywheel Portfolio should be very similar to that of investing in hundreds of LROs. That is, you'll get a lot of cash flow in the first year, and then it will trail off until month 36. This repayment curve is what generates the accelerated snowball with LRO investments.

  • If you use an Auto Investor account, flips will be identical as they were for investing in LROs. One advantage of Flywheel Portfolio is that there is no need to spread your investment out as some of you were doing to get more diversification.

  • You can also invest in Flywheel Portfolio in a regular (non-Auto) Investor account. In this case, you would just make a single investment into the Flywheel Portfolio, turn off reinvestment, and transfer the cash to your bank when it repays weekly.

  • We have comprehensive FAQ for Flywheel Portfolio here.

How to snowball

The key to snowballing is using the "Passive Income" feature in the auto investor account.

First investment

  1. Make a transfer.

  2. Wait for it to clear and invest. (Typically 1-3 business days depending on your bank). You don't have to do anything to invest - as soon as the funds clear they are automatically invested in the available LROs on our platform. (Typically 70-80 LROs)

  3. Once your funds clear and are invested, set the Passive Income Target to 10% of your investment. This will ensure that repaid loans don’t get reinvested. The 10% is somewhat arbitrary — it's just a number that is high enough to ensure that you can withdraw your repayments.

    1. On the web, go to Account Settings -> Auto Investor Account Settings -> Passive Income:

In the mobile app, tap on the Gear icon in the top right of your account dashboard:

At the end of each month, transfer out the repaid balance to your bank account

Flips

  1. Set your Passive Income Target to $0. (See screenshots above) This will ensure that your new transfer gets invested fully.

  2. After the funds clear, repeat steps 1-4 above.

Anything else you'd like to see here? Please email our support team at support@groundfloor.us or use the support widget to chat with them.

Did this answer your question?