I have just joined a time bank. In exchange for the hours I deposit offering, say, editing services or making ice cream, I will withdraw an equal number of hours in (I hope) yard work.
The bank is called Hour Dollars, and they’re up to around 100 members — probably at least 20 or so more people joined after the orientation I attended on Saturday. Although the site says “St. Paul and surrounding suburbs,” they welcome people from the other side of the river. If you’re in the Twin Cities, attend one of their orientation sessions. If you join, they ask for a $12 donation to help maintain the web site, coordinate orientations, answer emails, etc. (Not from around here? Check out Timebanks.org., or this Marketplace report, where I first heard about it, or this great report on my favorite money blog by someone already well into time banking.)
How Time Banking Works
- All services are valued equally in a time bank.
At Hour Dollars, you automatically start out with three hours in your account to withdraw, and you earn more hours for attending social meetings, which also give you a chance to meet the people you might exchange services with.
- Time is measured in 15-minute increments, and it’s up to the parties doing an exchange to specify other terms upfront. For example, if I’m baking cookies for you, am I buying the ingredients, or are you? Who’s gassing up the mower? Etc.
- What if a job takes you longer than you planned? You work together and with the administrators to figure out how you’ll make up the time.
- You can cap hours for a certain service; you can also say no if you’re just too swamped. You can change your mind. Just don’t be a total irresponsible flake about it.
- Some things don’t work well in a time bank. For example, you can offer gardening services, but you can’t offer, say, part of your bumper crop of cherry tomatoes, backdated with an estimate of the time it took to produce them.
- What services do work in a time bank? I have a double-sided sheet here that runs from Addressing Cards to Feng Shui, Ear Candling, Metaphysical Studies, Neon Signs, and Word Game Development. Think of it, it’s yours. The Sword Polisher, sadly, has moved on, so there’s an opening.
Hour Dollars sounds pretty interactive. If you’ve used up your time, but nobody’s contacted you for help, you can let the administrators know, and they’ll try to funnel jobs your way.
They have a potluck, a summer picnic, and fall “showcase” where you can display/advertise what you do. They do a newsletter, other social events, are starting a walking club, and have toured an ice cream factory!
This is all much more than I expected Hour Dollars to be about, and it sounds a lot more fun than I was, ahem, banking on.
Stay tuned: I’ll let you know how the actual transactions go.
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Tags: alternative economy · frugal hack · Hour Dollars · time bank7 Comments
[...] is an interesting post on Cash on the Barrelhead (Cash Poor? Try a Time Bank) about time banks—essentially barter clubs for services. The recession is apparently causing an [...]
Sooo, sort of a social networking thing? I don’t completely understand it…
@Laura: It’s just a way to get stuff you need without paying for it. It’s a trade — I put in so many hours to write a brochure for you, and that time “earns” me an equal number of hours that somebody else does yard work for me. Neighbors helping neighbors, only more organized. Make sense?
Makes sense to me. Interesting to see all of the innovation that comes from a down economy. Can’t wait to hear about how this works out.
Time Banks are awesome. One of the cool things about time banking is users are encouraged to spend their hours because they don’t earn interest and it does you no good to ’save’ them so you can get out and try all sorts of cool stuff and trade offs that you may not have ever thought you’d try. This is a great 6 min video on a popular Vermont Time Bank that discusses the benefits and interviews users http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3kJ5QB6Htk
You may also want to check out our Community Currency Magazine each month for more info. We’d also love to hear about your experiences.
Mark Herpel
editor@ccmag.net
PS Loved the post “Poor Woman’s GPS”
Yep, I see now. I must have been a bit bleary upon the first read.
[...] sorry to say that for me, time banking didn’t work at all. Trading time instead of money for services is a great idea. But in [...]