generally what I do. Many of the Barter checks can also be passed with Speech - the Mysterious Magnum is one, I believe

It would be handy if barter increased the stock of items in shops so with 5 barter you find a few of each item with100 barter you find each shop a veritable wallyworld of items.

Speech > Barter

True I'm finding the same thing (which is why I'm not finding barter very usefull), simply pick up lots of weapons from fallen foes, sell then all to the venders & walk away with all there money. And what do you do with it? nothing because even on hardcoe 'living of the land' isnt that difficult, after all you can just go to good springs source, or any of the other clean water souces in the game and heal for free. Personally I think caps should be worth alot less, or food and healing items should cost alot more, along with doctors treatments etc. After all new vegas is a ver rich place which should also mean very expencive.

They could add something similar to the Keep in Neverwinter Nights 2 or the caravan company in Storm of Zehir to make barter, as well as some of the other less useful skills, more useful.

If they give the ability to run a casino, start a delivery service or a caravan company then they would add a lot more opportunities for barter to be used.

The problem is after you have your implants and a nice amount of ammo, money becomes pointless.

I found barter on all my playthroughs to be highly usefull, true early on speech beats it, but many dialogue options don't have a speech check and most of those that require a skill it's barter.
I don't tag it, but it's up there as a fourth / fifth skill if I have points to spare, or a fourth one to sprinkle in on a low intelligence build that only maxes one skill ( a combat one ).

Well, there's repairs too, particularly if you haven't gone for Jury Rigging, but yeah, more ways to spend your money are always going to be desirable.

Maybe homes shouldn't be given away so freely.