Barter: Swap and Trade for What You Need

March 20, 2009— -- Meg Madison, a mother of three who lives in a suburb outside Indianapolis, can't get much done without her van. She needs it, she says, to shuttle her children around and run her day care center. Short on cash and faced with having to spend $1,000 to fix the van's engine, she came up with an idea: bartering.

"Financially, we're trying to find every possible way, every possible angle and that's what led us into this bartering," Madison says. "It's about getting the things you need without spending the money that you don't have."

Madison offered to watch the three children of her neighbor, Dana Woods, in exchange for fixing her van. Woods, a single father, is trying to get his own auto equipment sales business off the ground after losing his job as a sales manager.

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"It is kind of like going back to the core of what our country was founded on," he says, "neighbors helping neighbors."

Rising unemployment and financial setbacks are pushing more Americans to get creative. They're increasingly turning to bartering, the most ancient form of commerce and the new currency of these tough economic times.

Most of the exchanges are made via the Internet. Postings on the bartering section of the Web site Craig's List have doubled in the past year. Another Web site, U-Exchange.com, which connects people who want to barter, says traffic is up nearly 200 percent.

These days a lot of people have time and skills but no money.

"We come across people every day who know something that we do not know and have a certain skill or trade that we can certainly capitalize on," Woods says.

Ads include everything from an attorney offering legal help for landscaping to an English teacher who will tutor for a carpet installation. Among the most unusual is a funeral director in Brooklyn, N.Y., offering free service for a new addition on his apartment. Think of it as posthumous payment.

In downtown Manhattan, a store opened up based entirely on the concept of bartering. Called "The Free Store," the basic concept is that you can take anything you want as long as you give something back in return. Merchandise ranges from jewelry to clothing to CDs.