Individuals have practised bartering
for thousands of years. In very simple terms, you exchange goods or services
with someone else. Centuries ago, a farmer may have bartered his sheep in
exchange for grain from a neighbouring farmer to grow some crops.
The list of items that you could barter
really is almost endless. For instance, boats, furniture, works of art, tools,
appliances, cars, computers, TVs, vegetables from your garden etc. Just think
of the services you could provide and swap such as babysitting, dog walking,
running errands, and house keeping.
What if your next-door neighbour had a
holiday home and you offered to mow their lawn every week for 12 months in exchange
for two weeks holiday in their villa. You may be a plumber who needs a sit-on lawn
mower to mow your half-acre lawn so you agree to install a bathroom for someone
in exchange for his or her mower. You could offer to iron your friend’s clothes
for a month in exchange for two tickets to go to a Coldplay concert.
In all these examples, no money changes
hands and, in the current economic climate, that is one of the major benefits
of bartering. It is estimated that swapping to the value of billions of dollars takes place every year and it is
growing all the time. This is evidenced by the number of websites that have
appeared on the Internet to do with bartering such as Bargain Barter. Thousands
of individual swapping deals are done every week.
Looking at the example we gave above of
bartering your neighbour’s holiday home in exchange for cutting their lawn - normally,
if you were going to arrange a holiday, you would either pay for it out of your
savings or, if you do not have the money available, probably pay for it on your
credit card. You may well have every intention of clearing your credit card
balance as soon as you receive your statement so that you do not pay any
interest. However, it is quite possible that you won’t clear it and end up
paying a lot of interest. If you had done some bartering for the holiday, as
referred to above, you definitely would not have got further into debt.
So, swapping really is a great way of helping
the family from a financial perspective and with sites like Bargain Barter
available to you it can also be great fun getting involved in a variety of
swapping deals. You will quickly become experienced in bartering, saving your
family a great deal of money and benefiting by obtaining some worthwhile
products and services.
No comments:
Post a Comment