Most have heard of Jeff Booth. His book the price of tomorrow changed my entire viewpoint of technology, money, and deflation.
With the corruption that take takes place in our money it is hard to find anything where you get more for less.
Luckily, we have found 2 communities where we get more for less in terms of value. I'll share our experience with one of those communities right now.
The Barter Market:
My wife and I joined a barter market last year, we found it on Facebook. It was pretty small with about 200 people in the group.
The concept is phenomenal. You show up to the market with whatever you have that is handmade or homegrown. No hand me downs or thrift store stuff. It has to be handmade or homegrown.
We were hooked right from the start. My wife and I have our garden and she makes amazing salsas. We usually show up with about 75 jars of salsa and the trades that we make are amazing.
But something interesting started to happen. As we became friends with everyone in the group and attended the barter market 2 or 3 times our minds started to expand. The main question was "What more can we offer the group."
My wife always wanted to go Huckleberry picking but never did, this group helped her find that motivation, she went picking immediately and came back with the biggest haul of huckleberries.
I always wanted to learn how to make homemade butter and ice cream. For 10 years its been all talk, no action. But this group got me out of talking and into action. It was so affordable and easy to do. Now both of us had more to offer the group.
Now we are to the point where we are thinking about getting a https://www.honeyflow.com/products/flow-hive-2-plus because honey is treated like gold in the group. We can't stop thinking about how to provide more to the group in any way we can.
With the trades everyone walks away feeling like they got more for less. We make fresh salsa all the time, we have the goods and its routine for us so the salsa is no big deal. When we make the trade the person on the other end walks away feeling the same way. They've made something that is easy for them, cost effective and usually they have on hand.
This dynamic has been lost on us as a culture. Providing and bartering with a group is always deflationary. Everyone walks away feeling like they got more for less. And the connections you build with something like this are powerful.
When we had our first baby the group showed up more for us than our network of friends and family. We had fresh milks, cheeses, dinners, lamb meat, etc etc. All fresh and healthy foods delivered right to our door. Our little one is 8 weeks now and we still have food from the haul.
We've been with the group for 18 months now, we've been made co-admins and might expand into other neighboring cities. Its beautiful, there is no other way to say it.
Find yourself a deflationary community and start contributing. It'll change your life.
(Pictures of what we come back home with after every market)