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Post-Recession, Are We Back to Bartering?

Last night I met up with a friend to discuss her website. As a Squarespace user, she had set the site up herself, but I noticed on mobile some of her images were rendering incorrectly. I knew what the problem and solution was having dealt with this before, so I emailed her about it, which led her to ask for some additional help.

I honestly set up this meeting as a freebie, outside of an hey-buy-me-a-tea thing. Just a few tweaks and a Google Analytics setup. But she did ask what she could do to repay me anyway (we both being Wisconsin-born women), and as we had been talking about diet and nutrition earlier, she suggested she could do something like a week's worth of dinner prep for me. Something I could store in the fridge or freezer and grab at will. As a busy person, I can appreciate something like this.

But this got me thinking: In this Post-Recession (hopefully?) Economy, is this the new normal? I only ask because this isn't the first time I've experienced this, and it seems to be occurring with more frequency. I Googled it and came across a wealth of information (Bartering is Back in Style! These Startups Tell Us How, Entrepreneur.com), but have we in fact started moving back to a time where we can trade skills for food as finances continue to be tight and discretionary income remains hard to come by? I'm not sure I'm all that opposed to it, although the major challenge being in knowing the monetary value of your skill and ensuring a fair trade is a tough one.

Will act for food, right? Thoughts?

--JG

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