Borrowing can save you time and money.
It can also keep your home from being cluttered with things you barely ever use.
If you have a kind neighbor then you might already be a big borrower but some people don’t know where to turn when they need to borrow something.
There are lots of great websites to help you borrow better and here are just a few of them.
NeighborGoods (www.neighborgoods.net)
The current frontrunner in the online borrowing community, NeighborGoods has recently been featured on Tech Crunch, Boing Boing, and NPR.
One of the great things about NeighborGoods is that it is has a Verified neighbors system in place to help avoid thieves and jerks. The website also has a user rating system that will help you find great people to lend and borrow items from. Let the money saving begin!
Return My Pants (www.returnmypants.com)
If you have a big library of books, an ever-expanding DVD collection, or thousands of CDs then you might want to look at ReturnMyPants.com.
Keeping track of all of the things you lend out can be a big chore. It’s sometimes hard to remember who you lent that copy of Pulp Fiction to or when you told your friend you’d give him back his power drill. Return My Pants is a free service that tracks stuff you lend out to other people and the things you borrow from others.
Facebook (www.facebook.com)
Chances are you have a lot of friends on Facebook. And chances are those friends have a lot of things that they either rarely use or wouldn’t mind lending you. Bingo. Post a message on your Facebook wall asking to borrow something from one of your friends. It could be anything… a chainsaw… or a video camera but chances are one of your Facebook pals can help you out. Mention that you’ll return the favor and you should have some messages in your inbox in no time.
BRRWR (www.brrwr.com)
BRRWR is fully integrated with Facebook so you can combine your efforts to borrow with both of these social media websites. Their mission statement is as follows:
“We connect people who are geographically or socially close to one another and want to borrow things. Borrowing from your friends helps you avoid unnecessary expenses.”
Neighborrow (www.neighborrow.com)
This is another borrowing community website. Neighborrow has been around since 2006 and their goal has been to make borrowing and lending more enjoyable. You can borrow almost anything you could think of on the website including books, movies, music, tools, and even household items.
One of the cool things about Neighborrow is you can also trade items with others so swapping records or tools from your garage is a breeze. If you’re looking for a good swapping community you can also try your local Craigslist.
Those are just a few websites that have been set up in North American cities to make borrowing easier and more pleasurable. Try a few of them and see which ones work best for you.
[This is a guest post from Mark Huntington from the website www.lifecover.ca, a life insurance quote website.]
