Plan for self sufficient into amazing retirement plan?

[Carla D]

There was a barter system for a while in my old home in CA. You started out with a gift of 20 "barter dollars". Let's say you have eggs for sale/barter and someone else wants some eggs. Let's further say that they do tattoos, which you aren't interested in. Instead of the tatoo, the artist pays for the eggs with "barter dollars", which they earned from someone else wanting a tattoo. Once a year, the organization also ran a holiday bazaar so that all the people that had various arts and crafts available for barter would have a chance to earn barter dollars, which they could then use throughout the year for anything from haircuts to dental work. Some people would hang onto their barter dollars all year and use them at the bazaar for their holiday shopping. The government did get their share however: if what you bartered would normally have been charged sales tax, that part had to be paid in cash, and you got a tax form at the end of the year showing those sales. It was an interesting melding of barter and cash systems.

Interesting concept. Thank you.

 

[Carla D]

Learn to weld, weld together all manner of scrap metal, call it art and sell for a big price.

That is a definite possibility. My husband could use his welding skills to do some repairs for people.

 

[Carla D]

@Beekissed has a knack for repurposing Goodwill finds. Get old headboards and make benches.

That is one of my favorite hobbies. I even went to school to learn how to repair or refinish furniture. As a couple, my husband and I like buying off of Craig’s list or auctions. Buy things that in working condition with some repairs or modifications. Another thing we like to do is find free pallets or pieces of limber. We tear the pallets down and use the boards to built things out of. Same with the chunks of lumber. We have built so many things with free wood and lumber. We have built several indoor hog pens, doors/gates, trailers, a goat house, and a couple of nice pig huts/houses for our outdoor pigs. We’ve also built some small pieces of furniture and made cabin repairs with free lumber and other free materials. One mans junk is another mans treasure.

 

[Carla D]

We go all the way back to Livingston (3 hour drive) for Rudy's honey. We are loyal customers. We haven't found anything up here to beat it.

http://www.rudyshoney.com/

WOW! And very fair and competitive prices as well. I may have to order some and give it a try. We go through a lot of honey here. For coughs, help my daughter swallow a pill, eating off a spoon, baking,or on toast. Bees are one thing we need to seriously think about doing when we get a place of our own.

 

[Carla D]

As Bay said, GW is your friend, as is the Rehab store...our Rehab store will even get in huge loads of barn boards, new boxes of flooring of all types, wood trim scraps, etc. All of these things come in REAL handy when wanting to do things on the cheap.

I turned a $1 headboard from Rehab into a clothing/coat rack for my bedroom and the rest of it is being used in various projects throughout the house. Used old antique items I had on hand and those I picked up at a local flea market for $.50 to form the pegs..the whole thing cost me $3 to make and took less than an hour when including paint dry time. These are things you can use in your home or resell for a tidy profit...city folks love stuff like that.

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Sweet!

 

[sumi]

That is a definite possibility. My husband could use his welding skills to do some repairs for people.

A friend of mine in South Africa learned to weld and started a business doing all manner of welding work for people in the small town we lived in. Due to the high crime rates down there, people want burglar bars, etc, so he got a lot of business doing those, but also gates, palisade style fencing, etc. Within a year or so he told me he's making a small fortune and can barely keep up with the work he's getting. Once word got out he even got offered work from the next, bigger town, 35 miles away.

 

[sumi]

WOW! And very fair and competitive prices as well. I may have to order some and give it a try. We go through a lot of honey here. For coughs, help my daughter swallow a pill, eating off a spoon, baking,or on toast. Bees are one thing we need to seriously think about doing when we get a place of our own.

I use honey for minor burns more than anything else! (I burn myself all the time on my small wood stove) It's wonderful stuff

 

[Beekissed]

That is one of my favorite hobbies. I even went to school to learn how to repair or refinish furniture. As a couple, my husband and I like buying off of Craig’s list or auctions. Buy things that in working condition with some repairs or modifications. Another thing we like to do is find free pallets or pieces of limber. We tear the pallets down and use the boards to built things out of. Same with the chunks of lumber. We have built so many things with free wood and lumber. We have built several indoor hog pens, doors/gates, trailers, a goat house, and a couple of nice pig huts/houses for our outdoor pigs. We’ve also built some small pieces of furniture and made cabin repairs with free lumber and other free materials. One mans junk is another mans treasure.

That's something we share....I LOVE getting something for free and making something useful out of it, repurposing it, etc. It's definitely among my favorite things to do and it just feels right to recycle unwanted things and give them a new purpose. Sort of how God recycled me in much the same way, so it's sort of holds symbolism for me as well.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

I love Bee's ideas for repurposing, especially materials from Habitat, because the money you spend there goes to getting folks into their own homes. That coat rack she made for $3 would easily sell for
$15 - 25 on an internet site. I'd work up a Web site, instead of planning on all of your sales being local.

 

[baymule]

WOW! And very fair and competitive prices as well. I may have to order some and give it a try. We go through a lot of honey here. For coughs, help my daughter swallow a pill, eating off a spoon, baking,or on toast. Bees are one thing we need to seriously think about doing when we get a place of our own.

They started small and their business grew. Now they offer many products besides honey.