Bartering in Daily Life

There exists in this world people who are professionals at bartering. You see them at swap meets and flea markets. And if you get a chance to watch someone who makes their living trading in the markets like that, the skills they demonstrate are really something to watch. You can learn a thing or two about how to make deals and interact in a bartering situation just watching people who call that their livelihood and do very well making trades and finding hidden treasures to sell elsewhere.

But the skill of bartering can become part of the lifestyle of you and your family without everyone becoming a fast talking deal maker. All you have to do is think of ways to trade for goods or services rather than use money as the only way you get things done or get new stuff. Even at the family level, many of the arrangements you make with your kids are on the barter system. The child might do his homework and clean up his room in exchange for TV time that night. To the parent, that isn't a barter but earning a privilege. But to the child that is a barter that they are willing to be a part of.

You have a lot of community relationships with people at your church, neighbors in your cul-de-sac or other moms and dads whose kids go to school with your children. These family connections and social networks explode with ways to barter for mutual benefit in daily life. One very common form of barter is exchange for services to watch each other's children. Perhaps you can pick up some of your son's friends and let them stay at your house until their parents get off work each day. And for that 2 hours of work you do, those families can reciprocate and let your children spend a Saturday at their house while you take some time to take care of your personal business.

In the same way, goods are commonly traded between neighbors in ways that are just neighborly and don't seem like financial transactions at all. If you and your neighbor are really good gardeners, a natural barter situation comes about when you trade your crops. If you have a bumper crop of tomatoes and you give them away only to find your neighbor at the door with a sack full of cucumbers, you may not even know it but a trade just took place without a single negotiation having to happen.

Sharing a ride with a neighbor to a school event, picking up each others mail when on vacation or helping a neighbor fix their fence because they mowed your lawn when you had a bad back are all natural ways that bartering become a part of daily life in ways that we never really associate with economics or trading. But those forms of mutual help agreements have a huge value to you and I in ways that are hard to put a monetary value on. Not only do you eliminate money from an exchange of goods or services but you build friendships and trust neighbor to neighbor. And that is an outcome of bartering with people you are close to that is priceless.