So if someone told you there was a way to claw back some of those treats that eat into your disposable income, you would probably jump at the chance. Well, actually there is a way, and it is older than money itself.

It used to be called barter – exchanging your goods and services for someone else’s – but today it is more commonly known as ‘swapping’.

… allow people to build up credits by doing favours for others and then cashing in those credits at a later date.

Swapping and bartering allows everyone to get goods and services without spending any money.

I just can’t get over the dumb ass-ness (my new word of the day) of this story – the journalist and their editor should be ashamed.

So you ‘barter‘ your goods and time to others in exchange for something called ‘credits‘. You can then ‘swap’ other goods and services for those ‘credits’

or re-writing that sentance

you ‘sell‘ your goods and time to others in exchange for something called ‘money‘. You can then ‘buy’ other goods and services for that ‘money’

Yes thats right – MONEY is just a convenient way of keeping track of CREDITS. Cash has no value in itself – its value is that you can SWAP it for other things.

We used to use beads and sea-shells instead of cash, but they don’t fit in your wallet very well and tend to jam up ATM’s.