Living on zero money for two years

[Richard]

This is extreme frugality !!! You may have heard him speaking on the Radio today.

From the Daily Telegraph...

How I lived by spending nothing for 2 years - Mark Boyles

There's a link to a free ebook.


Richard

[saint-spoon]

Interesting concept but in reality only a very few could ever manage this. One could argue that even though no money has changed hands, bartering labour for material things is pretty much like getting paid except that you don’t pay tax… and taxes used to be paid in produce rather than coin. Anyway well done to the chap.

[Mo]

Well, yes......
but.....
you can only freecycle if you are online, almost impossible without phone and electricity (hard to make arrangements to pick things up if you are using the library)
you can only swap clothes with friends if you've spent on clothes already, and not worn them to ribbons
a lot of these 'live without money' types use a lot of cadging.

Mind you cutting down on the amount of new, unnecessary stuff you buy, growing your own etc. etc. must be good.

Cashless wedding....hmmm. Pay the registrar with exbatt eggs????

[Richard]

Interesting.

I noticed that all four people featured in the brilliant Ben Vogel Wild series, although living somewhere completely remote still had Solar Panels for the Internet !!

It seems in that instance that people can go without money but not without communication and entertainment.

Richard

[Mo]

How do you get internet without paying a fee?

And the solar panels. Yes, you can 'live off your fat' for a while. I don't think that counts.

[Richard]

As far as I know, you don't Mo.

Seems beamed Internet is about £24 a month with speeds of around 20Mbps which is faster than normal broadband but slower than fibre optic.
It would certainly suit those living further than about 4 miles from an Exchange.

Guess he paid up front as he said the preparation took him three months.

Even so, very interesting.

Richard

[manda]

I often wonder with things like this do they truly mean living without money or rather not using extra money...he could generate income from generating electricity and selling it back to the grid...then use that to pay for paying things like internet connection.
I'm always suspect of people saying they don't use money ...do they rather mean they create something to make income rather than working and spending? ....Hey whatever it is I'm not knocking it....it enables them to live the way they want / would prefer...good on them.

[Freeranger]

I think it's also interesting how much of other peoples' goodwill is involved. The caravan was donated, much is gleaned from Freecycle, some of his food was donated, and he presumably was also able to use some of the same generous farmer's land for food growing. The solar panel was bought as well, so already at the beginning of the venture he had most of most peoples' main expenses covered. I've seen FreeHotel before, and of course you can be very cheap if you don't have to pay taxes, rates and any of the same costs as a business. If you are discouraging the tax generating businesses like hotels and B&Bs, clothes shops etc, then you don't have the infrastructure that others have already pointed out are needed for this kind of lifestyle, Try lift sharing when all anyone has is a bicycle and there aren't any roads left. I think the gent is a bit naive, frankly.

Having said all of that, I admire his hard work and all of the general principles he suggests. I agree that rampaging consumption is a huge issue and we should all be living as simply as we can.

[Mo]

Looking back 50 or 60 years we all lived like that, to an extent.
If you went on holiday a neighbour came in to feed the cat. Now there are 'business opportunities' for catteries, kennels and even hennels.
Clothes were passed down between neighbours children. My socks were darned (not everyone would wear darned socks - some of the hand-me-downs I wore came because they needed darning). My mother made a lot of my clothes, and clothes for others at cheaper than shop prices - probably not possible now.

Now that so many women work outside the home there is much less time to do things the ways that are cheap in money but costly in time. And less 'slack' in the system for informal caring and sharing arrangements - hence the rise of care homes and nurseries.

[Richard]

Very good points, for the first 8 / 9 years after downshifting I didn't make a case but was very much helped by other peoples generosity.

In fact, even now I wear Players Trainers - they buy a pair, wear them a few times, don't like them and if they're the same size as me, pass them on!!

Richard

[Freeranger]

I've been thinking about your comments, Mo, as it is undeniably true that thngs used to be more like that. I suppose, though, when women were baking, sewing and so on, they were buying fabric, haberdashery, flour etc, and so the balance was probably different as well as less. Going further back, everyone would have grown their own food and the day job (surfing, vassalling and the like) would have provided a little for things that couldn't be made or bartered. But there were fewer of us and our expectations were lower. With this kind of population density you almost need to find ways of keeping everyone employed. Is it sustainable, I wonder?......And is it practical for all the millions of us to live like this man?....No conclusions yet, just ponderings. Richard, you sound as though you know some nice people. I think they help because they're envious of someone being brave enough to do it.

[Mo]

I think there's the world of difference between doing what Richard did, and the man living without money.

Nothing wrong with money, it's a 'medium of exchange'. More effiecent than barter.

But nothing particularly good about 'employment' either. Gross National Product is always quoted as if it's a good thing, but it's partly a measure of the resources we are using up and partly a measure of the things we pay others to do for us - it completely ignores the things we do for ourselves.
So if I call and the band plays for a ceilidh and is paid it might count in GNP. If all the people who were dancing & playing went for a walk, or got together to play tunes, that wouldn't count - though it might give as much pleasure.
If someone goes to work selling fastfood and her children are looked after by another who has no time to cook from scratch that counts in GNP. Housework and motherhood don't.

I know that is an oversimplification. And half of the problem is the gulf between the full time (110%) jobs that pay well, and the pittance that you can earn part-time, outside the rat-race. And that the lower paid have to live on.

[plot45b]

I've just finished a blog post about Mark Boyle (http://lifeintent.wordpress.com/2013/07 ... n-ethical/), but did you know that there are others?

Theres Heidemarie Schwermer in Germany and the 'hardcore' Daniel Suelo in the USA.