I’ve bartered my way to a better life – I’ve traded vegetables for a better car & eggs for haircuts, now I’m debt-free

PICKING up the family car at her local garage, Katie Thomas needs to fork out for two new tyres and wheel alignment.

But instead of breaking out a credit card for the £160 invoice, the 32-year-old settles part of the bill with two boxes of freshly picked fruit and vegetables she’s grown in her allotment.

Then she adds a handwritten note confirming her fiance will be there that night to paint the small office at the back of the garage workshop, and he will put up new storage shelves for staff.

No money is changing hands, but former decorator Katie knows it’s her family’s savings account that will benefit the most from this unusual transaction.

“I use barter banking to keep my family debt-free. We swap skills for bills,” she says.

“It has helped us save more than £6000 by swapping skills and growing our own food. The money has paid off £1500 in loans in the last three years ” Katie tells Fabulous. 

“I have swapped or ‘barter banked’ veggies for repairs, swapped DIY skills for new kitchen appliances, offered up toys for carpets and eggs for haircuts.”

And when she does have to legal tender, Katie says that she ditches the plastic there too. 

“I am a dedicated ‘cash reverter’,” she says.

“I ditched credit and debit cards for banknotes and coins. I use real money instead of plastic cards. 

“It means I know exactly how much we must spend each week. It is life changing. 

“If it’s not in coins and cash in my wallet I don’t buy it.

“We call it the frugal financing and it’s how we have saved almost £6,000 to go towards a house deposit and to fund a family holiday in just 24 months.”

“It’s money we save by swapping not paying cash. When you grow your own food you realise just how expensive store bought food is.”

The family went to Turkey in October for a week long break and are going to Spain at the end of February for a winter warming week long holiday coasting all inclusive.

But that’s not all.

“I have planned a holiday in May to Spain and got it for a bargain £800 by booking ahead,” she adds.

“Covid was terrifying and I thought we’d be in debt forever and there were food shortages .

“The cost of living was terrifying.

“That’s why I turned to barter banking as it meant I could use cash to pay off the loans and still get items we needed for without using money by bartering.”

Katie, who lives with her painter fiance Mike, 38, and their 11-year-old son Robert in Hartlepool, says Lockdowns food shortages and fighting over toilet rolls also inspired her to ‘grow her own.’

Katie, who lives with her painter fiance Michael, 38, and their 11-year-old son Bobby in Hartlepool, Teesside, says the food shortages during Covid lockdowns also inspired her to ‘grow her own.’

“I wanted to be self-sufficient in suburbia. I did not want to be living on credit. I wanted control,” she says.

“I was worried about shortages and relying on supermarkets. Then when the cost-of-living crisis hit, I knew the only way to save money and be debt-free was to try the approach which worked after World War Two.

“I read up about frugal living in the 1950’s post war era. I realised we needed to try a simpler approach if we wanted to be cash rich.”

Katie and Mike decided to put away their credit and debit cards a few years ago and use cash for weekly purchases.

Each week Katie splits her cash up into envelopes for groceries, fuel, treats and basic purchases.

“‘Cash reverting’ makes the decision to spend so much simpler. If you do not have the cash in your wallet, you do not buy it,” she says.  

“At the start of each month, we save £200 from our pay and then take out the ‘cash we have budgeted’ for weekly shop purchases once the monthly gas and electric, rent, water and council tax is paid.  We have £500 in cash to play with so, our savings remain intact.

“It sounds so simple, but it prevents us from using credit cards. We even compete to see how much cash we have left each week and that goes into our savings.” 

In 2021 Katie and Michael began renting a 500-square foot allotment from their local council as part of their frugal living plan.

Katie pays £103 a year for her allotment and she, her fiance and son have spent hundreds of hours planting, harvesting and growing produce in a bid to cut back food bills even further.

“We grow all our fruit and vegetables, from strawberries, lettuce, pumpkin, cauliflower and carrots as well as cabbage,” she says.

“We have a greenhouse for seedlings and chickens for eggs.

“In three years, we have become fruit and veg self-sufficient and it’s cut our grocery bill by £2,500 a year.”

Swapping eggs or vegetables for a haircut is not crazy

Katie Thomas

Katie’s love of her allotment as a way of saving cash appears to be catching on. 

Greenpeace figures show allotment waiting lists around Britain are up by a staggering 81% in the last decade.

In the past twelve months the demand for allotments increased by 12% with some councils reporting a five-year waiting time as suburban self-sufficiency grips Britain.

Whatever Katie’s family cannot eat from the allotment she freezes or makes into jams to stockpile. 

She sells produce to neighbours and that money goes straight into a savings account.

The mum-of-one says her much loved ‘lottie’ was also the inspiration for barter banking.

“We started by swapping excess fruit and veg or eggs we had for vegetables we had not grown but needed with other allotment growers,” she says. 

“In the last two years, we have had bumper crops and started swapping fresh fruit and veg for our skills with local businesses. 

“It started small but snowballed into barter banking and skill swapping. The quality of food you get is better and the quality of work your skill swap is always of a high standard.

“Bartering is now key to our savings plan.”

With Micheal being a painter and builder, and Katie having decorating and gardening skills, the unconventional method suits them well.

Katie also has a reputation for being the queen of saving money, and says she always knows where to find the cheapest prices for clothes, groceries and household items.

She says: “If friends want help, then I will help them find the cheapest price or cut their budgets. In return they pay me with items I need or with their own skills.

“Swapping eggs or vegetables for a haircut is not crazy.

“When Bobby and I needed haircuts, it saved us £40 because we battered, and skill swapped fruit, veggies and eggs for the trims.

“I put that £40 we would have spent into our savings account.  That’s the key to seeing your savings account flourish.”

Katie has now built up a network of people to barter bank with.

“If I have excess fruit and veg and need a new toaster or a carpet replacement, I will put a post on Facebook marketplace and offer a barter or skill swap,” she explains.

“If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

“The key is fixing a barter and swap agreement that suits both people. You know the amount you would have paid if you used cash.

“We always put that cash into the savings account. That is the key to effective barter banking.”

Katie’s unique money-saving method is growing across Britain.

On TikTok #bartering has a staggering 153.2million video views. 

Google searches for “bartering” increased 50% in April 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.

The phrase “food swap” jumped 53% and “swap clothes online” soared one hundred per cent, according to data provider SEMrush.

Savvy Katie is also a “Car Boot Queen” pulling in between £200 to £800 every two weeks selling old toys, clothes, clutter collected over winter and  her excess of home grown  allotment fruit and vegetables.

“Every summer we try to get a stall once a fortnight at a local car boot,” she says.

“It costs £15 for a selling spot and our policy is to never go home with anything we bought to sell.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get

Katie Thomas

“Our ‘everything must go’ selling policy reap rewards.”

Katie declutters each room and puts together boxes over winter of toys, kitchen items, household appliances, even half-filled house paint cans and wallpaper ends she didn’t fully use.

“We ask friends and family if they have clutter, they need to get rid, ” she says. 

“They give us boxes they would have taken to the dump, and we sell what we can.

“We will make an average of £200 a weekend and the most we have made is £800 selling old phones out of contract, Pokémon cards and old tablets.

“Bartering is getting to be almost an everyday payment method for me as my network of bartering businesses is growing. More people want to swap skills or things I have for bills. It really works.

“We’re planting more fruit and vegetables than ever before on the allotment and are stockpiling items people want to take to the tip to sell at garage sales.

“People have seen our success and want in on our old fashioned approach.

“We are living the good life.”