We are trying something new this year – bartering. My wife is a stay at home mom, and a home school teacher. But she is also a certified school teacher. When you home school in our state, once your child reaches a certain grade, you need an evaluation by a certified school teacher. So for the last few years my wife has been doing evaluations to earn a little bit of money to go toward our home school needs.
Well, this year, in addition to money, she will barter. So far, she is exchanging an evaualtion for some reading tutoring for our oldest daughter, and has also bartered for our bikes to get checked and serviced. Not bad.
If you think about, almost all of us have a skill, talent, maybe even some items sitting around that we could exchange for something else. We are just doing it locally, but there are even web sites to facilitate bartering. One I checked out is www.tradeaway.com. They calim to be the world’s largest online barter exchange auction site. It was pretty impressive. They list everything from antiques to vacation or travel trips. Not bad.
You do need a realistic evaluation of what your goods or services are worth, and it helps to have some idea of what you want to barter for is worth. But overall, it can be a win win situation. So far we have found it to be a great idea and really useful.
