Exchange of Trades / Skills

fidobsa Serial expat

508POSTS

6 years ago

I now live in Croatia but I am very close to the border with Hungary and there are far more expats in Hungary than there are in Croatia. Today I stuck 4 tiles on my bathroom wall...it did not go well. I seemed to get on OK with the old fashioned small tiles but these paving slab size ones the make today are another matter and I struggle to create a flat wall surface with them. I started this tiling about 3 years ago but keep putting it off because I am not satisfied with my workmanship. I wish I could get someone else to do it in exchange for me doing some job they hate, like rewiring. What I am suggesting is some kind of register of members with particular skills that they are willing to offer, perhaps also with an indication of some tasks for which they themselves could use help. I realise that the chance of getting 2 people who need specialist help at the same time AND each having the appropriate skill to help the other is a bit remote so the recipient of specialist help might have to be flexible on what kind of reciprocation he is willing to undertake.

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GuestPoster279 Guest

0POSTS

6 years ago

Great idea.

But.... In the USA barter is taxable. I don't know if it is in Hungary or not. If it is, the topic may be dead in the water (unless this becomes a grey economy).

Side note: I am a very good tiler. And so I know that even here there are many different sizes of tiles,, even sheets of 1cm tile. But they do all need a properly prepared flat surface. I am also a good plasterer, and can give a flat surface to tile. And wiring is certainly not something I like doing. Your needs are a good match. But.... The second "but".... Croatia is a bit far for me to travel. As you said, it may be difficult to do the logistics.

fluffy2560 Hungary Expert

14650POSTS

6 years ago

klsallee wrote:
Great idea.

But.... In the USA barter is taxable. I don't know if it is in Hungary or not. If it is, the topic may be dead in the water (unless this becomes a grey economy).

Side note: I am a very good tiler. And so I know that even here there are many different sizes of tiles,, even sheets of 1cm tile. But they do all need a properly prepared flat surface. I am also a good plasterer, and can give a flat surface to tile. And wiring is certainly not something I like doing. Your needs are a good match. But.... The second "but".... Croatia is a bit far for me to travel. As you said, it may be difficult to do the logistics.

It's taxable everywhere usually. The worse thing about barter in the EU is that it could attract a VAT element as it'd be considered services.

Barter has been suggested many a time in the past as a way of getting around taxes. Obviously a bit of back scratching isn't going to bother anyone unless it grew to a large scale. I mean, if I lent my welding set to my neighbour and the neighbour helped me pick some cherries, who would care about it? And they'd laugh at you if you reported it.

If I asked my neighbour to say repair my (fictitious) van fleet and I replaced her office roof, then maybe it would attract attention especially if it was on a larger scale and there was some element of calculating a value in the exchange - i.e. time spent and a "daily rate".

On the other hand, if I helped someone do something, then that wouldn't necessarily cause a problem if they bought the materials and I was just helping a friend like my neighbour example.

Here in Hungary, the services element is usually offered under the table if the materials are bought by say, the home owner.

I think plastering is a matter of practice and then putting the tiles on the same. There are tricks of course - one of which is adding a dollop of PVA to the cement adhesive mix to make it sticky or screwing a wooden batten on the surface to support large heavy tiles. It's well worth watching Youtube and getting the right tools like the glue trowel which therefore gets you the right glue depth. For plastering I found the "hidden" secret is learning to "polish" the wetted surface at the end and as I said, having the right tools

Marilyn Tassy ViP

7111POSTS

6 years ago

Bartering is a great idea but yes, getting the right people at the right time and location is something else.
I used to "barter" haircuts, sort of.
I never ever felt right charging friends for a haircut so if they offered to do me a small favor in exchange I had no problem with it.
My husband used to help all his Hungarian friends years back with minor car repairs etc. since most of them had 2 left hands when it came to repairs, more into book learning then working with their hands.
Never asked for anything back but one friend after many years of knowing us and my husband helping him.all over the world,he decided to do us a good turn.
He paid airfare, hotel and a nice dinner for us from S. Ca. to Honolulu HI for one week. We also brought our son with us at this guys expense. No way would I leave him behind after his granny had just died.
My mom had just passed on and he thought we needed a vacation.
That's about the biggest favor anyone has ever done us.
We put up a few tiles a couple years back behind our stove and counter area in the kitchen.
There were already some tiles up so we bought those small white square ones to match and just extended the tiles work.
Nothing fancy.
My husband did prep the wall but not anything major, just enough for them to stick.
So far so good....
The kitchen needs a major redo so we didn't get too serious about making the wall perfectly even before putting up the tiles.
ATM our new neighbor is having a handyman do some electric work on the wall and then going from there.
All fine, we went to the dentist office, came home yesterday and I noticed a chunk of wall paster pealing down the wall.
We called the guy over to show him what he had done .
He like a dismissive idiot just put some paster over the mess and said he would tell the owner and when the painter started working he would fix it.
Sometimes you really shouldn't hire just anyone to do a job.
These old flats 119 years old need a pro that knows what in the heck they are doing since basically they are just old junk buildings that are over valued.
At least he said he woud take note and let the next workers know they must try working a different way with caution.
These quick and cheap workers are not really professional in the fields.
Funny thing, I was just thinking of your little place near Croatia and wondering if you ever got the locals to turn on the electric etc. Remember there was some issues with the local villagers being jerks and not turning the electric on for you.Hope it has been resolved by now.

Marilyn Tassy ViP

7111POSTS

6 years ago

Knowing human nature, most people will always think their skills and work is more valuable then what another person can offer in exchange.
There is never a "even Steven" mind set when work is involved.
Someone is bound to feel jipped.
What's worth more, a bail of hay or 5 rabbits?
One haircut for one gallon of wine or 3 hours of babysitting?
It would take people who were good friends or in the same community for this system to take off.

In the mid 90's when we lived in Honolulu, my hubby met a HU enginer.
This guy was about 10 years older then he was and had many, many investors in his idea.
His bills and rent were covered by these investors plus he had a wife and a child to support by these investors.
He also had a shop to experiment with his idea.
He was developing some sort of new Diesel engine and was nearly there, he made a sample engine that ran perfectly.
i forgot all the details of why this engine was a big thing at the time.
He even got my husband to volunteer to work on the engine with his machinist skills.
My husband got only $10. an hour from the investors but another $10. an hour in stocks when it was sold and in production.
We had all legal papers on this stock etc.
At least my husband got a few bucks out of it in straight cash.
My husband found it a lot of fun so it was more like a hobby as well as being useful.
Long story short, we left Honolulu and gave up on this invention work.
Not sure what ever happened to this project, the guy probably died or the investors finally pulled out and he had to get a "real" job.
In theory bartering is great but in reality not always a happy ending for everyone.

GuestPoster279 Guest

0POSTS

6 years ago

fluffy2560 wrote:
Obviously a bit of back scratching isn't going to bother anyone unless it grew to a large scale.

Agree. But the original post suggested a registry, which could grow into a large scale, and would also be public info the tax man could target.

GuestPoster279 Guest

0POSTS

6 years ago

Marilyn Tassy wrote:
Knowing human nature, most people will always think their skills and work is more valuable then what another person can offer in exchange.

I think that is also true with a monetary system of "payment".

How much, in currency, is your time, energy, knowledge, experience worth? And should not one feel jipped when one's time, energy, knowledge and experience is worth "less" in Forint than in Euro?

fluffy2560 Hungary Expert

14650POSTS

6 years ago

klsallee wrote:
Marilyn Tassy wrote:
Knowing human nature, most people will always think their skills and work is more valuable then what another person can offer in exchange.

I think that is also true with a monetary system of "payment".

How much, in currency, is your time, energy, knowledge, experience worth? And should not one feel jipped when one's time, energy, knowledge and experience is worth "less" in Forint than in Euro?

That's the usual problem, putting a value on the exchange. Once that happens, it's the concept of money and then the Revenue will want a cut.

One potentially interesting way around it might be to use say Blockchain (of which Bitcoin is an example) technology and then there's no central authority to chase and it can be borderless.

On the other hand, the transactions are all recorded and indeed public info (as they must be in a Blockchain) but the beneficiaries might not be easily identifiable.

I can see FB (and Libra digital money) being the basis of expansion of the sector with many layered applications. Even Google Pay and Apple Pay will have to get in on it. All I can hear is the public sector shouting "regulation!". There's an informative article about it in this week's Economist.

GuestPoster279 Guest

0POSTS

6 years ago

fluffy2560 wrote:
I can see FB (and Libra digital money) being the basis of expansion of the sector with many layered applications. Even Google Pay and Apple Pay will have to get in on it. All I can hear is the public sector shouting "regulation!". There's an informative article about it in this week's Economist.

A friend of mine who works at a power generating company has had to deal with digital currency miners. The miners started to grow more and more and were actually causing large problems for the power grid in the area. And they had to start regulating power to such users. Regulation from the private sector in this case. Regulation is not necessarily a bad thing. Proper regulation simply prevents a minority of bad actors from adversely affecting others. Only when improperly, and heavily, applied is regulation silly.

fluffy2560 Hungary Expert

14650POSTS

6 years ago

#10

klsallee wrote:
fluffy2560 wrote:
I can see FB (and Libra digital money) being the basis of expansion of the sector with many layered applications. Even Google Pay and Apple Pay will have to get in on it. All I can hear is the public sector shouting "regulation!". There's an informative article about it in this week's Economist.

A friend of mine who works at a power generating company has had to deal with digital currency miners. The miners started to grow more and more and were actually causing large problems for the power grid in the area. And they had to start regulating power to such users. Regulation from the private sector in this case. Regulation is not necessarily a bad thing. Proper regulation simply prevents a minority of bad actors from adversely affecting others. Only when improperly, and heavily, applied is regulation silly.

That's an excellent point. It's not just power generating it's also cooling too. Iceland is carving themselves a niche in this area. Geothermal power and colder weather air exchange, ideal situation and with that offset, it could be rather profitable.

Not sure how FB will tackle this with its data centres as they aren't really in the right places as far as I can see. But they could use coal - Trump's non-climate change agenda. Must be MAHA - Make America (and everyone else) Hotter Again