CHAPTER 1

WHAT BARTER CAN DO FOR YOU

If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.

—Buckminster Fuller

In 1972, high school sweethearts Karen and Rick Hoffman had been married only a few months and were living in Rick’s mom’s basement apartment. The couple really wanted to buy a house, but, like a lot of newlyweds, they had little money and no prospects for getting enough for a down payment on a house anytime soon. Karen, who was only eighteen at the time, began calling real estate companies to ask if there were any rental homes available.

Each agent responded in nearly the same way: Little or no rental property was available, but would she like to buy a house?

Karen was frustrated by the lack of homes for rent, but she began paying attention to how the agents discussed the properties they had for sale. Always an acute listener, she began piecing together tidbits of information that the agents dropped. One talked about the requirements of getting a home loan through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), but the couple would have to come up with closing costs, which they didn’t have. Another discussed asking a seller to pay closing costs because he was “highly motivated.”

Hmmm, thought Karen. There’s more to this story than just buying a home. If I can just put these pieces together, there may be room for negotiation.

Excited and nervous, Karen began looking at prospective houses, but nothing she saw fit their tiny budget—as well as Rick’s race car and gear and their dogs, Sam and Spooky. Karen gave up on working with an agent to find a home. Instead, she and Rick decided to make their own destiny. They drove through neighborhoods in the area where they’d grown up—first hers, then his—looking for houses for rent or homes that looked vacant. On their first trip out, they found nothing. But on only their second trip, they found a vacant but enticing small ranch for sale on a cul-de-sac. It had a garage that would hold Rick’s race car and a fenced yard that would be perfect for the dogs. Like a good omen, it was on a street named Rickey. Although they didn’t want to get their hopes up too much, it certainly seemed to be exactly what they were looking for.

They called the agent representing the home owner and discovered that the owner lived out of state and was tired of dealing with renters, repairs, and hassles. While the little fifteen-year-old ranch was structurally sound, its insides were a mess. There was psychedelic paint covering the walls, twoby-fours painted black and nailed to the living room walls as “decor,” hardwood floors with significant damage, a sidewalk that needed new cement, and minor work that needed to be done to the exterior. The seller was willing to go through FHA to sell her home but didn’t want to invest the money, and she lived too far away to handle all the repairs that would make the home eligible for an FHA loan.

The deal seemed doomed before they could even get started, but, Karen, ever the creative thinker, began to ponder other ways to make it happen.

“What if we offered to make all the repairs that were needed in exchange for living in the house without paying rent?” Karen proposed to Rick. Since Rick was quite a handyman (and would later become a contractor), he loved the idea.

They made their proposal to the seller’s real estate agent, and the home owner agreed. In the meantime, they worked to save the few hundred dollars they needed for their down payment while rehabbing the home. They poured all of their time and energy into hammering, patching, wallpapering, and laying flooring, and within six months, they had saved enough to make the down payment and were ready to close. As agreed, the seller paid the closing costs. That and Rick’s job enabled them to qualify for that FHA loan. Because of Karen’s innovative idea, the young couple had their first home in a short time and with little money.

In fact, having a house so early in their marriage allowed the Hoffmans to build up $10,000 in equity that would serve to help them buy a larger home when Karen was only twenty-one and Rick was twenty-two. The equity in that home accrued and allowed them to purchase larger houses as their family grew and needed more space. Eventually, the couple was able to build their dream home, again, using the equity from their previous houses as well as cash they had saved from the many other trades they had made for items they wanted or needed.

Barter became a powerful force in the life of Karen and her family from that point forward.

SO WHAT CAN BARTER DO FOR YOU?

Probably more than you imagine. All you’ll need is your imagination and a little help from this book to put barter to use in your life. It also helps to have a willingness to put aside the beliefs that all of us have grown up with: that you have to save money, make money, or borrow money to buy the things you want. This is probably the hardest thing for all of us to learn. Stop before whipping out a wallet, a checkbook, or a debit or credit card and ponder, Is there another way I can get what I need or want?

When you embrace bartering, you bring a host of benefits into your life that you hadn’t considered before. The A-number-one benefit you reap from barter is saving cash. If you can barter your services for something you would normally pay for, you have clearly freed your cash for something that you can’t get through barter.

Trading can save you time. If you’re like us, you would rather visit the dentist than have to clean house. So bartering for housecleaning is a mighty fine way to avoid doing a chore you dislike and free up your time to do something you do like, perhaps by keeping the books for your housecleaning company or babysitting for the owner’s children. Doesn’t spending more time doing what you love to do rather than trudging through something you hate to do sound like a far more appealing way to live your life?

If you’re concerned about the environment, barter is a great way to recycle. Instead of dumping your stuff into the trash stream, barter it to keep it out of our growing landfills and productive for someone who really needs it.

Another pleasantly unexpected benefit to barter is how it strengthens friendships and builds your sense of community in ways you wouldn’t have anticipated. Shera trades her writing and marketing skills with a concierge doctor, who, in turn, cares for Shera’s family. In a cash-only system, Shera’s family would never have considered paying $3,000 a year on top of insurance for a doctor’s care. But in this case, the doctor makes house calls and is available by cell phone, 24/7. Since traditional doctors don’t usually provide their personal cellphone numbers or drop by the house to check on your child’s rash, Shera is delighted to be able to use her talents to obtain such a wonderfully luxurious commodity that would have been otherwise out of reach. Her husband, a busy executive, loves having a concierge doctor because he doesn’t have to wait in her office and saves hours in his time-crunched day. But beyond the benefits of having such great care, Shera has become friends with her doctor in a way that she has never been able to with any other medical professional. Because she and her doctor meet for lunch, chat about their families, and, oh yeah, get a little work done in the process, they have established a friendship that not only helps both of them do better work for each other but also broadens their base of friends and their sense of community.

Building a sense of community through barter happens in many other ways. Working moms and dads might appreciate the system that two families in St. Louis created. These two couples, each with young children, agreed to host dinner for the other couple once a week. During those dinners, the couples were able to taste recipes that were new to them, leave behind the pressure of making dinner that night, hang out with their friends, share a glass or two of wine, and let their kids romp with each other in a safe environment.

“We figure it’s a night of entertainment since the adults get to talk and the kids get to run around together, and at least one family gets a break from making a weeknight meal,” explains mom Valerie Hahn.

Some people have used barter to create babysitting co-ops that not only saved them hundreds of dollars on sitters but also built a sense of community and lifelong friendships and allowed them to live richer lives because they weren’t tied to the dollar.

In a cash transaction, you write a check or swipe your credit card and then consume your goods or service as just another customer. But the very nature of barter makes it more personal and builds friendships that can last beyond the length of the barter arrangement. Simply setting up the deal ensures that you are going to have a much more interactive relationship than a cash sale. And that relationship often grows, bringing more barter opportunities your way. When your trading partner is happy with the transaction, he or she is more likely to refer other barter deals your way, assuming you’ve got the goods or capacity to meet the demand. If you want repeat trades or referrals, treat people right. Karen traded her coaching services with a chiropractor and was so delighted with the treatment she received that she referred the chiropractor to five friends who then became paying patients of the chiropractor, amounting to thousands of dollars of revenue.

When you don’t swipe that credit card to get what you need, you’ve just taken a bit of pressure off your family’s finances and left room on your credit line that you may need for other purchases. Since cash and, more than ever before, credit are scarce, avoiding the need to access a credit line will also help you keep your credit score high or improve it over time. If your credit cards are maxed out, barter opens up a whole world of goods and services that were simply unavailable to you via plastic or the often-elusive bank loan.

The psychological impact that barter has on you and your family can be tremendously positive. Depression occurs and self-esteem drops when you cannot provide for those you love. So if you are struggling with debt, have lost your job, or just need more money, barter can help you handle those pressures by providing other avenues of getting what you want or need. If you can barter for child care, you’ve taken a huge stressor off your list of worries. Your children will be able to sense when you are less stressed and more relaxed on a daily basis. If you’re feeling less pressure, you’ll be in a better frame of mind and more likely to interact with your kids in a positive way. Less stress means less yelling and less tension and more happiness all around. You can’t measure the immense value of a healthier, happier home life.

But what if it’s not a product or service that you need? Perhaps what you’re really hunting for is education; barter can help there too. There are universities, community colleges, and trade schools that barter from time to time. Perhaps you can work in office administration, libraries, or classrooms; write newsletters; cater; and so on in trade for your tuition.

Perhaps traditional education may not be exactly what you’re looking for. What if you’ve lost a job and need to get experience in a new industry? You could apply to be an intern, but then you’d be competing with the entire field of college kids who are seeking the same internships. (Plus you might feel a tad awkward being an intern if you’ve got more salt than pepper in your hair.) Karen’s uncle Don gave us a lesson in how to barter time for education.

Don was between jobs and really had the urge to get into the radio business. He was intrigued by it and thought it would be fun, as well as enable him to earn a living. So he visited a radio station he liked and applied for a job. He was turned down. He applied again and was turned down. Determined to work for the station, he offered to be an unpaid salesman for two weeks, so he could learn the ropes. They said yes. For two weeks, Don worked his tail off learning the radio sales game. At the end of that time, he was offered a paying job where none had been available before. Don bartered his way into an excellent, hands-on education and a paying job. Better still, within about five years, Don had advanced at the station to become its general manager. The guy who had bartered his time was now running the show. Even if he had never been hired at that station, Don still would have learned valuable sales skills that he could apply at another station or in a related field.

Don is a perfect example of someone who was unemployed and used barter—in the sense of trading time for opportunities—to reinvent himself. Most people frantically begin job hunting when they get a pink slip, which is a perfectly understandable reaction. But when the economy is in recession or jobs are simply hard to find in your field, barter is an option that can open new doors for you. If you lose your secretarial job but have secretly yearned to open your own restaurant, barter can help you get started. Maybe you’ve never worked in a restaurant and have no idea where to begin. No problem. Barter your time like Don did and get the experience you need, along with the inside tips, tricks, and strategies of running a restaurant, all for the cost of your time. Plus, you won’t jeopardize your unemployment insurance because you’ll be working for free while you learn. We want you to begin to view your time as a valuable asset that is worth using in order to receive something equally valuable in exchange.

Maybe what you really want is time with a career counselor or outplacement specialist to help you fine-tune your résumé or interviewing skills. Or possibly you just need help figuring out what your next career should be. Barter can help you access those services without having to deplete your dwindling cash reserves. Perhaps a personal Web site with a portfolio or other reference material is what you lack; trading your skills with a webmaster could solve that problem without cash changing hands. You get a professionally designed Web site to show off your work, and the webmaster gets an advocate in you, another site to add to his or her portfolio, and a bit of advertising at the bottom of your home page.

Chances are also good that you’ve got skills from your downsized job that you can trade for what you need. While cash is still king, you can ease your need for hard currency by trading your carpenter services (or whatever your talent is) for, say, restaurant gift certificates for a few free meals at the place you helped remodel. Maybe you used to have a job as a buyer or procurement clerk; have you thought about helping a small business get the best deals on their raw materials with your top-notch bargaining skills? If you’re a tech guru, you can trade your information technology savvy for child care that will give you free time to job hunt. What about trading your technology skills for upgrades on the technology you need but can’t afford?

Another area that is always ripe for barter is marketing. Your marketing skills can help a graphic designer who is redoing a restaurant’s menu or signage. A public relations specialist can help promote nearly any business. Any talent that is marketing related holds special appeal to business owners, who will be apt to trade services with you. Clearly, the potential is enormous, limited only by your imagination and willingness to give it a go.

Barter isn’t just about acquiring stuff; it can also be about getting rid of stuff, too—namely, all of those items currently cluttering up your basement, attic, shed, barn, closets, trunk, space under the beds, and storage unit. (This also means saving on storage fees for the unit once you empty it out.) By offering to barter your excess furniture, bikes, kids’ clothes, and maybe even that dusty treadmill—we know you had good intentions, but just think about how much guilt you’ll be free of once you pass it on to someone who will actually use it—you free up space for the great new items you’ll get and actually use. Maybe you’ll trade those items for a service like dry cleaning so that you can avoid re cluttering the garage. Best of all, you’ll be keeping your unwanted junk out of a landfill and getting it back into use by someone who truly wants it. Voilà! You’ve become a trader and an environmentalist. Didn’t know you had it in you, huh?

So now that you and the kids have traded all those old clothes from your now-clean and organized closets for newer ones, how about a vacation, compliments of barter? Many savvy folks who don’t have enough disposable income to afford a cruise or time at a fancy resort still get to have fabulous vacations because they barter for them. Perhaps you can trade your handyman skills for the cruise or your housecleaning labor for the resort stay. The trick on this sort of luxury-item barter is that you’ll almost certainly have to find someone on the inside of the vacation provider who can help you make a direct trade happen. Bartering directly with a cruise line, airline, or resort is difficult, generally speaking, although not impossible. However, a commercial barter exchange, which is a for-profit company that brokers trades and handles all the accounting for you, will give you options on other vacations that the most in-demand spots won’t allow. Hotels, bed-and-breakfast inns, or smaller, family-owned resorts will be trading options on an exchange. With an exchange-based trade, you will get a tremendous amount of flexibility, a faster conclusion to the transaction, and access to vacation options you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

If you prefer a less-programmed vacation, there are options for swapping homes—even with families who live overseas.

There are Web sites such as HomeExchange.com that connect people who want to swap their homes with others in locations all over the world. (Read more about this in chapter 6, and find a list of barter Web sites in the Resources section.) Here’s your chance to pack your luggage for a vacation in Paris or San Diego or wherever—for no cash.

Perhaps you’re the type of person who has a big heart but a small wallet. You’d like to give more to your favorite cause or charity, but you just don’t have the disposable income to do it. We automatically assume that we must spend money to support the charitable causes we love. Money doesn’t always have to be the solution. Instead of writing a check, you can use barter as a creative avenue to help a cause. How about bartering your services or time? Find the company that produces what your charity needs and offer your services or goods to that company in exchange for a donation of what your charitable cause needs. It’s not only a win for your charity; it also gives the company supplying the wish-list item an opportunity to support a good cause and gain a bit of public goodwill for doing so.

An organization that Shera belongs to was holding a trivia night fund-raiser and used barter to lower the costs that the trivia master charged. Members of the organization used their personal Twitter accounts to send out promotional “tweets” about the trivia master working with the organization. In exchange for those tweets and some other promotional efforts, the trivia master lowered his costs by about 20 percent. He got great publicity, and the organization saved money, which could then be used for scholarships. Everybody won. (Check out chapter 8 to learn more about charitable giving and barter.)

Maybe your desires lean more toward the for-profit world. Budding entrepreneurs can use barter to save money on business start-up costs, which can often be dream-killing obstacles. We know many entrepreneurs who have used their skills not only to save money on starting their businesses but also to attract new customers at the same time. When Shera first started her writing business, Karen introduced her to a women’s entrepreneur organization that needed public relations help. Shera traded her PR and press release writing talents for membership in this influential businesswomen’s networking organization. That membership gave Shera access to a large group of women entrepreneurs that she would have been hard-pressed to meet and interact with otherwise. Barter is a powerful tool in the entrepreneur’s tool kit, and it is one that is too often overlooked.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Obviously we aren’t saying you will be able to get everything you want through barter—at least not immediately. It’s true that some items, particularly those that are in high demand or in short supply, may not be available for barter. Temporarily. When the demand drops or the supply goes up, the barter option returns to the table. Patience is an absolute necessity when you barter.

What it all boils down to is that barter opens up an entire realm of possibilities and ideas that you never considered before. Barter is the tool that helps to create possibilities in your head and your heart. Our hope is that you, instead of reciting mantras like “I can’t afford it” or “We shouldn’t spend our money on that,” start saying, “Why is it so easy for me to barter for what I want and need?” Indeed, we hope this will become your affirmation.

Whether you barter to help your family, yourself, or a friend, bartering is a tool that can affect you emotionally, physically, and financially. Trading can make you a more creative problem solver, more self-reliant, and more hopeful. This is especially true if you are dealing with a large debt load, underemployed, or unemployed. The sense of defeat and despair that arises in those situations for most people can yield to a new sense of opportunity, broader horizons, and optimism for the future—a future less needful of cash.

GREAT TRADE!

Jacqueline Freeman wins our award for Amazing Trader, not only for sheer volume but also for inventiveness. Jacqueline and her husband, Joseph, are organic farmers at Friendly Haven Rise Farm in Venersborg, Washington (population 3,000). Jacqueline admits that she’s got an advantage because she lives in a small town, where bartering is easier. She’s also got a leg up because she’s a farmer, and farmers are barterers by nature and tradition. But she insists that barter isn’t just for country folks. When she was an urbanite living in Seattle, she once provided an elderly woman with physical therapy in exchange for home-baked treats. The patient desperately needed the treatment but couldn’t afford it, and Medicare reimbursed only a small fraction of the cost; in addition, the patient was too proud to accept charity despite her pain. By bartering, both women came out winners. Jacqueline was thrilled to have home-baked goodies in exchange for helping someone in need to heal; the patient got the treatment she needed with her pride and dignity intact and without going broke.

Jacqueline has also traded a seat in the beekeeping classes she teaches for pepperoni venison and homemade preserves. One woman attended the class in exchange for home-baked organic fruit pies. Jacqueline has bartered a beehive for Cutco knives; half a butchered cow for using a neighbor’s pasture and barn for a year and haying his field; dental fillings for physical therapy; two young calves for a butchered hog, cut up and ready to go into her freezer; her artistic ability creating menus for free meals (very helpful when she was a broke twenty-something); a stay on her farm for a radio host and her husband in exchange for being featured on their show four times a year—and much more. Joseph has learned to barter from Jacqueline’s example over the years, and he once traded his horse-training skills for a class in saddle making.

“Anything that improves my life is a good trade,” Jacqueline says, even when the trade is a bit lopsided in the other person’s favor.

The key is to be open to barter opportunities and listen carefully when people talk about what they need in life. Chances to barter are everywhere if you start looking for them, even just casually, she says. That’s how she runs across most of her trades, and she’s sure you can do the same, if you’re open.

TRADING TIP

Start keeping your ears and eyes open for chances to barter. Listen to what people say they lack or need. Once you become more attuned to the opportunities to make trades, more of them will come your way. Take a chance and ask if they want to trade!