The financial system is very artificial and it needs everyone to play fairly and sensibly to continue to survive and for you to be able to rely on it.
The current banking crisis showed that being dependent on a system that is so dependent upon good behaviour from everyone else is a bad idea. Like the whole financial system, the banks were interlinked, and when some weren’t sensible, it took many other people and at least one country down with it. Some business people specialise in taking advantage of market conditions to make their money, and they don't mind creating conditions, inevitably on a grand scale, that adversely affect everyone else to do it.
Time banks are similar to the old way of swapping or bartering, but allow you to trade local units of credit, within a local group, rather than only swapping with just one person. That way, you can trade for many services, including professional services such as dentists, and some groups allow you to trade credit for some goods as well, such as homegrown vegetables.
As well as having an alternative way of trading with people around you, there are other benefits.
It gives you a trusted circle of friends that you can call upon, and that's often the most attractive thing about it for most people. You get to know and trust people in your area, which is quite handy when you need people you can rely on to look after your home, plants, cat and so on, when you go away, for example.
Another major advantage is that if you don't have any money, you can still trade, as long as you can put some time in, (although there can be a small initial charge to cover some administrative costs when you join your local time bank.) After helping someone within the group, they write a cheque for the local time bank currency that you've joined, and you can then spend the amount of credit that you've earned within the group. That means that if the economy slows down and people are conserving their money, you don't suddenly find that you can't get any currency to spend, because people have got limited amounts to spend. That's a very big difference.
Time banks are usually called LETS, which stands for Local Area Trading Scheme, and you can often look one up in your area. If there isn't one, you may be able to ask a website supplying their contact details to add you to a list of people who are interested in starting one of the schemes.
For example, in the UK, you can go to www.letslinkuk.net.
Difficult times are a fact of life, and if you want to get through them, you'd do well to invest a little bit of time and do some of your trading through a Time Bank. In addition to being able to carry on during difficult times, you’ll also find yourself with a circle of friends you can trust.
