I was watching this show today that had a clip about a town where for the most part people get their daily goods and services mostly from bartering. This was everything from daily food needs as well as even services like dentistry. Just has to make you think where if someone is always complaining that they don’t have enough money to buy something on whether or not the notion of bartering for items is just missing from their vocabulary.

That made me think of why one would not even consider it. I guess for many it’s hard to put a dollar value on whatever it is that they are offering to the other person. Therefore, the simple answer I think is to not see it so much as “How much money is it worth” but rather how much the person needs or wants what you are offering. As well, the amount of time it takes you to do something. Example, if it takes one guy one minute to fix a plumbing problem and another person one minute to fix a computer related one then that would be a good trade.

Trying to think of examples like that with a mindset of trying to put a dollar value to the services to see if it is an equal trade makes it more complicated and intimidating than it really is, in my opinion. Almost like trading fruit from a tree. If one grows apples and the other grows like pears at the exact same time and quantity then a simple one for one trade should be as easy as that.

You can then start debating about which one is more in demand, tastes better and so fourth. However, that just complicates it and makes it more intimidating. Simply let the other person decide if it is a good trade based on what they want and don’t want I say.

I was reading an article that talked about how a large percentage of people expressed how they never plan to fully retire from working even at an old age. They will still continue to be involved in say running a business that they created or taking part-time jobs. Apparently the reasons didn’t have so much to do about not having enough money at an older age, but instead it was about having something to do.

That didn’t shock me personally as I kind of have the same mentality. Feels like kind of a waste to just sit there and have say a party everyday. I wouldn’t even want to do that now even at a young age as there just seems like there is always so much to do and learn in life. I guess for some that would kind of change the whole perspective of how much money you really need to save during your younger years.

My thought is to never rely on some static savings anyways and so in that sense my “retirement” era should have various forms of streaming income. That way you stay semi active in making sure they are fully operational while at the same time you are working more towards making it so that you don’t have to be there all the time.

Usually when you think of creating a business to generate some kind of income most people would ideally want their business to grow in something big. Basically, like a large supermarket versus say a corner store market. With that in mind, it was interesting reading about people that literally had to start a new business like every few months as they don’t care about long-term viability as opposed to what is hot now.

Example, one month they could be selling merchandise from a very popular TV show and then next month they would scrap that all together and start selling souvenirs as they know there will be an event coming up where a ton of tourists will be around for awhile. Literally, it’s like non stop every month where they actually create a god stream of income this way.

I was just thinking how tiring that must be and the amount of energy you must have to put into constantly research what is hot in various industries. I have always heard of the term serial entrepreneurs for these types of people. Even with that though I thought that is more like changing a new business every four years or so just like how people change jobs. I personally find more challenge and satisfaction in trying to build something once that will continually give you returns in the future. But I suppose a good thing about the other direction is that you must gain a lot of knowledge and life experience that way which is valuable in itself.

Today I was watching a snippet about how much money people earn in certain fields and one topic that came up was about people that worked in environments that were fully commissioned base versus people that had a static salary. It was interesting too as it showed two companies that had virtually the same type of offerings to customers except internally one business had full commissioned employees while the other didn’t.

Not surprisingly, most of the commissioned people usually ended up with a higher pay cheque by the end of the year compared to a person on salary who was doing the exact same job. In some ways it is funny as most people would dread over the idea of actually having to sell to make money as it just sounds so risky where if you sell nothing one day you will get nothing.

I have done both before as well as one having a hybrid system. I think if you are striving to run your own business one day then finding something with a commission structure can go a long way in giving you a taste of what it is like to be self employed. Even in a workplace environment it gives you the mentality that you basically have control of how much or how little you earn.

The other day I was talking to a person how sometimes I have a lot of downtime due to the nature of the work and that is why I am always prepared to do something so that I am not wasting time. For example, those times are a great opportunity to say update yourself if you are a casual investor or if you run even a simple business like say selling stuff online.

That reminded me of a news clip I saw way back where there were high school students that actually ran businesses online on the side while attending school. During breaks they would literally whip out their cell phones and start to contact customers. A more common theme was students jumping onto a laptop during lunch breaks to keep track of a web based business.

Just goes to show that if you really want to you can maximize your day with side businesses to help you generate more income.