Time banks build economies, communities — hour by hour
On a recent spring morning, Susan Alexander left her Maryland home, climbed into her Volkswagen Passat and drove about five kilometres to pick up two strangers. She battled rush-hour traffic before dropping them off curbside at Reagan National Airport in nearby Arlington, Virg.
She didn’t earn a dime for her trouble, and that was the point.
There and back, the trip took about 90 minutes — worth about $40 if Alexander, a retired government intelligence analyst, were an Uber driver. Instead, she’s a member of the Silver Spring Time Bank — one of more than 100 such exchanges around the world trying to build community by exchanging time credits for services instead of dollars and cents.
“I have time,” she said. “I like giving the gift of time to other people.”
In Alexander’s case, passengers Mary and Al Liepold were grateful for the ride, but it wasn’t charity. Mary, a retired writer and editor for non-profit organizations, used time credits she banked for editing work and baking. Senior citizens who don’t drive, the Liepolds cashed in their credits to catch a flight to Montreal for a five-day vacation.
Without money changing hands or shifting between accounts, the airport drop-off was more like a coffee klatch than a taxi ride. Driver and passengers chatted about projects they’ve completed for the time bank, and no one raised an eyebrow when Mary said she likes to avoid the conventional economy. “The beauty of this is that you make friends. You don’t just get services.”
The Silver Spring Time Bank formed in 2015 and has about 300 members, said co-founder Mary Murphy. Last year, she said, 1,000 hours were exchanged for basic home repairs, dog walking, cooking and tailoring, among other services, without the exchange of money.
“You get to save that money that you would have spent,” she said. “You get to meet somebody else in your community and get to know that person. That’s a bonus that’s part of an exchange.”
Alexander, who shuttled the Liepolds to the airport, was giving back after recently spending her time credits to have her home thermostat replaced. She estimated an electrician would charge more than $100 for the job, but fellow timebanker Don Slater, a former NASA engineer turned National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration contractor, finished the job in about 30 minutes.
Slater, 68, called the wage differential between lower-paid jobs and jobs like his former one ridiculous.
“We train for different things, we follow different paths,” he said. “While one may be much more visible than the other — more stressful than the other — it doesn’t make it any less important or less significant.”