Welcome to my 52 Ways to Save $100 a Month series. We’re serious about saving money in 2016. Sometimes it’s the little things and sometimes it’s the big things. I’m here to walk you through some little things that can add up to BIG savings. 52 little things to be exact. Every week, join me back here for another small money-saving tip or idea that might not seem like significant savings until you see the overall yearly savings. It might just blow your mind. So pop in each Tuesday and read a new tip that will help you on your way to save $100 a month!
Today we’re talking bartering. Now I’ve been an advocate of bartering for years. You can check out every last post I’ve ever done on bartering HERE and see all of the cool stuff I’ve traded and all of the awesome stuff I’ve gotten out because of it. But today we’re talking about bartering BIG.
I think any sort of bartering is awesome. It’s a lost neighborly art form that I think needs to make a come back because it just makes so much sense. You take the money out of it and offer up what you have for what you need. There will always be someone who needs what you have, and chances are, they’d be willing to trade if you just ask. But we don’t ask anymore. And that’s just sad. So I’m on a mission to bring bartering back.
The how of bartering is simple. Just ask. Whether it’s via facebook, a phone call to a neighbor or even a quick ad on Craigslist, just asking is the only way to begin your bartering banter {holy alliteration!}. The worst that could happen is someone will tell you no. But more likely than not, they’ll see the value in it as well!
Bartering can take many forms. I’ll walk you through the ones I think are awesome.
Bartering for Services
I can’t cut my own hair. I can’t repair my own car. I can’t teach piano lessons. But I know people who can do all of those things. So while those aren’t my talents, I have a lot of talents I can offer up as a trade. I don’t believe in asking friends for freebies if their talent is their livelihood {for instance, if you’re a plumber, I’m not going to ask you to come snake my toilet for free just because we’ve been neighbors for years. That’s how you put food on the table and it’s worth something}, but I do believe in trading, which is essentially what bartering is all about.
Maybe you are a math wiz and you have a friend who happens to be a carpenter whose child is struggling in math. You tutor their child, they build your cabinets for free. No money changes hands, but the savings for both of you is significant.
Everyone needs some type of services, regardless of how tight your budget is or how much you are trying to cut back. If your heater goes out in the middle of winter, your budget might be shot to hell for months. Or you can find a repairman who is willing to barter. It might not always work, but it’s certainly worth an ask.
Bartering for Food
This one can take many forms, but it comes down to trading your excess food for what your pantry lacks. If your husband hunts, consider trading meat for food or services. If you grow a huge garden, look into bartering your over abundance of produce for pantry staples. I’ve done this so often through the years and it has saved me so much money.
You can take this a step further and prepare your harvest and barter using that, ie. make jams, breads, pies, etc. Your time-crunched neighbor might not want your strawberry haul because she has no time to do anything with it. But she might be very interested in some fresh jam!
Bartering for Splurges
With the recent remodel of a number of rooms in our house as well as our vacation home back east, I’ve become a pro at painting. Like I might rival the professionals. So when Mrs. Hillbilly asked if I’d paint her daughter’s room, I decided to barter with her for a splurge item: a Starbucks card. Did I need this? No. Would I be fine drinking tea from my own house? Absolutely. But the beauty of bartering is that it can often allow you those little extras not built into the budget. Or big extras.
I had a friend who traded dog sitting for a month for a week at their neighbor’s timeshare in Hawaii. No joke. Both parties walked away so happy and they both got what they need. I have a dentist acquaintance that traded dental work to contractors to have a cabin built. Seriously the entire cabin. He paid for the material but every penny of the labor was traded. Genius!
It might make you a little uncomfortable and you might have to crawl out of your comfort zone, but can can potentially save thousands by just offering to barter. You’ll never know if you never try!
How Much Can You Save: The sky’s the limit. Potentially thousands!!
Do you barter? What have you traded and received?
~Mavis
More Ways to Save:
52 Ways to Save $100 a Month | Clean Out Your Closet {Week 1 of 52}
52 Ways to Save $100 a Month | Break Up with Cable {Week 2 of 52}
Bria na says
My husband barters and I use to be embarrassed and feel like the others are getting the short end of the stick, but the “value” to them isn’t the same as the value to us. Recently he had a guy he works with whose family own a shrimp boat in Lousiana and he was going home for the weekend. My husband to,d him how much I love shrimp. He brought back 5+ pounds of collassal shrimp (fully intact with heads, legs, and veins) and two gallon bags full of another fillet fish (not sure of the type). The only thing he wanted was 2 dozen homemade warm oatmeal raisin cookies. I feel we got an amazing deal!
In the past my husband has also bartered for two guys to help to work on our vehicle for a complete homemade Thanksgiving dinner. It would have cost hundreds in a shop! We bought the parts and they did the labor.
He has also helped a friend “declutter” 20 years of gear from being in the service and I took a 40% commission from selling it all on eBay. It was a complete single garage full and took me about 1 month. He was happy to get rid of the “junk” and get enough money to pay his bills.
Most of my hubby’s bartering are for them wanting a “homemade” food and I am more than happy to comply since I am very blessed to be fluent in baking and cooking and I enjoy it. When he deploys I always ship him “extra” stuff because I know he barters like crazy with others (money is so worthless in a combat zone, but the last box of Twinkies is like gold). He got a flat screen tv last time on trade for several cans of spam and pre cooked rice bowls and nori! I’m always surprised what he ends up trading for, but I love it that he barters and they both walk away happy.
Mavis says
Great bartering!! And regardless of the “value” of the things being bartered, as long as everyone walks away happy, it was successful!!
Kristina says
We do. The most unusual barter, which we do every fall during walnut harvest, is trade the use of a port-a-potty from the potty pumper guy for walnuts. They just give us a regular bill, and we give them a commensurate amount of walnuts, based on the field price. Plus, we crack them for them first! We also have a hulling client who owns a clothing store, and we trade him for Levis for my husband and brother.
Mavis says
That just might be the craziest thing I’ve ever heard bartered for. Love it!
Jean F says
We trade the use of our neighbor’s dumpster for snow plowing. We don’t make a huge amount of garbage that can’t be composted, burned or recycled but we occasionally need to toss items that don’t fit into either category. The cost of a dumpster service is more than we care to spend. Since my husband plows our very long driveway and often the gravel road we live on, he makes sure the neighbor is plowed out in a timely manner. It works great for both of us!
Mavis says
Perfect trade. Everyone wins!
AshleyAshley says
I kind of barter….I’m very techy at what I do and often help people. One friend likes to take me out for lunch or dinner, or give me cash, but giving me cash feels awkward, and sometimes I think lunch or dinner are too high priced for what I’ve done for him as a thank you. So one time I asked him if he would come to my house and help me plant some shrubs and a tree. It was the perfect mix, I really needed the help and he loves yard work.
Mavis says
It’s tricky sometimes to find that perfect mix where everything seems fair, but once you do it’s awesome!! So glad you did!
Crystal says
A warning about bartering meat- if it is hunted meat, it is illegal to sell in the US. And bartering is considered the same as selling. So if, as you say, your husband hunts, it is illegal to use hunted meat to barter with.
Teresa says
What’s the difference between bartering and trading? I’ve traded stuffed peppers and hot mustard for fresh pears. Never thought about the tax implication. I have a friend that LOVES peanut butter fudge, we’ve traded fish for fudge many times.
Jane says
My husband works in IT and we’ve bartered for a lot of services with a lot of people. I’ve gotten some great haircuts/color, spray tans 🙂 My husband bartered with a local dentist who needed work on his iPhones and got a free root canal that he had coming up. That was awesome because dental insurance is the devil. Another physician had a running deal with him that whenever he was up for phone upgrades, he would give us his old phones in exchange for my husband helping move data over. SCORE. Plus, when he does stuff for close friends who insist on paying him even though he really doesn’t want it. . . he tells them Starbucks giftcards for the wife would be just fine 🙂
Mavis says
I so wish I could barter for dental services! That would be awesome!!
Marcia says
I don’t really barter except for swapping babysitting sometimes.
My neighbor used to barter all the time. He’s a chiropractor. He’d barter for fish and landscaping.
Patty P says
Recently my husband took one of our butchered meat rabbits over to a friend’s house and came back with a box full of parsnips! (Which is great because I can’t get parsnips to grow for some reason!) My husband seems to be a much better barterer than me, but I’ll take it! Come to think of it, I barter with my friends and co-workers more over things that I can do more efficiently (computer skills or crafty things)…so I guess it works out well!
Gwenn says
This week I bartered 4 piglets for 4 muscovy ducks, a blue eyed nigerian dwarf buck for my ladies (swoon <3 ), $250 in hay/feed & $100 cash. There is a local Farm Barter Faire put on by Edelweiss Ranch where people trade hand / homemade goods & animals. We LOVE to barter here!
Tiffany R. says
I use to trade fresh bread for eggs when we didn’t have a place for chickens. I loved the fresh eggs and she loved the bread. Gonna try my hand at chickens this year now that we have a place for them.
Janice says
This is my favorite way to save money. I have friends that have a strawberry farm and other friends that own a blueberry farm. One of my friends is a wonderful cake decorator and flower arranger/wreath maker. My husband hunts and fishes and while he won’t part with much of the moose or deer meat he always has lots of salmon. No one weighs anything we just give what we have and somehow we all end up feeling like perhaps we got the better end of the deal. With all my trades it just seems neighborly more than a transaction. I’ve traded with the same people for years. There are times I think my husband and I were born a century too late. While we enjoy the modern conveniences there is some satisfaction in growing or catching your own food and then canning or freezing it.