The New Economy

[Jenifer Madson]

I was working on an article about different ways to increase your income and decrease your expenses, and I got very excited about the creative ways we can get our financial needs met. In the face of the challenges of our economy, we have revived the practice of trade and barter; methods which can go a long way in filling in the blanks of your budget.

These are the differences, as I see them:

Trade - To me, trade is exchanging one like thing for another. For instance, I can trade financial coaching for executive coaching. A massage therapist can trade a massage with another therapist, seeing that that they each get what they can't necessarily give themselves.

Barter: I see bartering as swapping for something different. So maybe I exchange my coaching for someone else's massage.

Be careful - don't just trade or barter your services because you don't know how to ask people to pay for them. Sometimes you need cash more than you need a massage.


Take A Minute:
Check your budget to see what you need - what goods or services can you trade or barter?

Make A Minute:
As always, check with an accountant to see what the tax rules are for this, but don't hesitate to get creative this way.

Either way, don't be afraid to ask, or offer, to trade or barter - it could be just the financial alternative you're looking for.

[David Sandusky]

Good points as usual. I saw, and continue to see, viable businesses that thought they needed funding during the dot com burst and after 9/11 who instead were forced to bootstrap and get creative about business and personal needs.
They minimized expenses, traded and bartered. Not a bad practice during good times too I think.