swap

The economy seems to be turning around for recent college grads, so members of the class of 2012 may have the cash to make a dent in their massive student loans. Now all they need is a plan.

College students trade CDs, clothing and textbooks with each other all the time. The only thing cheaper than buying something used is trading and, with steep tuition costs, cheap is the only way to go for many students. Now, it's becoming more common for students and savvy shoppers to trade online...

Join ThredUp, an online clothing swapping site that recently branched out to include kidswear, and get two months of free swapping. The way the site works is you fill a box with gently used clothes that your child no longer needs, then offer it up for grabs. Meanwhile, you can pick a box of clothes...

If you're anything like the average consumer you have shelves full of used media; books, games, movies, and music.It's possible that your collection even has a fine layer of dust settled across it in order to help you find your favorites faster. It's likely that a five-minute inspection of your...

My first barter was last month -- a friend asked me to re-write her resume in exchange for making a few dinners' worth of her delicious soup. Simple enough. Then a business associate asked me for a similar swap -- editing copy for his Web site in exchange for two ski lift tickets at Squaw Valley....

Every generation seems to discover barter anew. A few companies are using the internet to work out the kinks of trading one thing for another with no cash. But for 73 years the readers of Yankee Magazine have been able to do the same for free, first on the pages of the New England institution and...

An editor of mine used to say that he could tell if someone was new to financial journalism because they would eventually suggest a story on barter as the next big thing. Luckily I'm blogging, not journalizing, now so I can mention Swaptree.com, which wants to be the Ebay or Amazon of people...