using no money

[vivacious]

The overall idea here is basically to live a simpler life and maintain a slow drip from investments etc to fund it.

What if you didn't use money at all? It's possible to get food, clothing, shelter, water, etc without money. You can barter, meet people, use a well or solar panels, trade your abilities for items or for other people's abilities, make things, build your own structures, etc. Some of these are based on an initial investment but some are not.

In fact I bet some people here are doing this to some degree.

Do you guys do this? What do you think? I have read about various people doing it. With the internet it's easier than ever since you can organize and get information easily.

The only real need for money is insurance for the future. You can meet most needs with little or no money. This also frees you from working for money or working at all at least in the traditional sense.

I think this is good. The only downside is that most people have some kind of drive to save for "the future" and that's still probably a good idea usually.

Thoughts?

And if you like the thread, list as many FREE things as you can (that are useful). Not cheap but free or at least that don't use money.

[BecaS]

Sunshine does many things for me: dries my laundry, helps grow my vegetable garden, cooks my food (solar oven) helps heat my home in the winter. We could use it to generate electricity but at the present time the electricity from the power company is cheaper.

Rain waters my garden and cools things down.

If I used heirloom seeds and saved those seeds I could potentially garden forever for free. Seed-saving is a skill that I've not yet mastered. I've made a couple of half-hearted attempts but I've not sincerely pursued it. I do use "volunteer" plants that self seed in my garden to replenish planters, fill in bare spaces, etc.

I've obtained some useful things and donated some things on Freecycle.

[riparian]

It used to be a goal of mine to live on less than $1k/year. What I've ended up with is a lifestyle that I CAN live for $2-300/m, but it's very restrictive. So if I stayed home and never went to town if live on like $150, but instead I mostly stay home and then also go into town to visit people or go on little trips, which cost money.

My up front investment was:
$27k for land and cabin
$4k for boat and motor
$10k for truck that'll last a long while
$3k or so in tools, solar, etc.

My expenses are:
$40/m phone/Internet (I got on someone else's plan and pay them upfront for a year, typically)
$40/m truck insurance
$50 or often much less/m in town food
Then gas and money burned in town are dependent on if I go to town.

Mostly I eat wild meat that I get myself and wild greens and berries that I harvest and dry. I have an ongoing egg trade. From town I buy onions, carrots, olive oil, vinegar, and dark chocolate. Bulk beans/rice every few years.

I cut a lot of wood for heat and it keeps me in good shape.

Most of my clothes, furniture, etc are free from the dumpster, but I have been upgrading some things lately.

I have a kindle which brings me many free books and a library card.

[KevinW]

Self sufficiency has a certain romantic appeal, but getting to 100% self sufficient is VERY DIFFICULT or perhaps even impossible. It is possible to be self-sufficient in a lot of areas, but there are a few where spending a few bucks is drastically more efficient and effective. For example, reading glasses or computer CPUs. While technically you could spend weeks fabricating those from scratch, you can buy something immediately for $5 that will be orders of magnitude better than anything you could make by hand.

Here are some free things that have been useful to me:

- Castoffs from friends and neighbors: computer parts, pots and pans, futon, record player, Shop-Vac, pepper plants, oxford shirts, firewood, unwanted groceries, surplus garden harvest, cats
- Free and open source software (Linux etc.)
- Google search, Docs, Calendar, and Voice
- Library books
- Blogs, books, recipes, audiobooks, podcasts, and Wikipedia on the Internet
- Parks
- Fishing bait and caught fish
- Beer bottles in trash cans (for home brewing)
- Leftover food from parties and work meetings

[Triangle]

Do you think using money is inherently bad?

I think of money as a pretty neutral or even positive thing. I don't have problems with spending money per se, I only have problems with spending more than I want of it. Some things are hard to measure in money, but wherever I can, I spend money over doing something myself if I feel it's a win for me.

[jennypenny]

I would love to be able to set myself up to live self-sufficiently and without money. I was tempted to list it as an answer on the lottery thread. But that's not really living without money--it's pre-spending the money. In my mind there's not much difference between spending a lot at the beginning to live money-free or just spending the money monthly like most people.

It would help to have a small community of people with different talents to fill in the gaps in your knowledge. In that case though, you'd still be bartering or exchanging favors which is a different kind of currency so it would just be living without paper money.

I think you can get close, but the effort to be completely money-free probably isn't worth it. Kevin's example of the reading glasses is a good one.

[leeholsen]

i try and do that during the week, my normal expense is just gas to work and back(and i'm sorry, but i'm not biking to work in Houston during the summers, 95 degrees with 85% humidity), but weekends always cost money to do things like eating out or going somewhere and i have decided i'm not willing to cut out most everyone i know just to be able to cut my budget to the bone.

[Dragline]

I think sharing and recycling are the more fundamental values being described here. Less use/need of money is a result of the application of these values -- neither the cause, nor to be confused with the values themselves.

Almost all of the (quite good) examples described above are of sharing and recycling.

As ancient texts say, it's not money itself that is taken to be the root of all evil, but the love or dependence upon it.

[workathome]

Money, at its simplest, is merely a more useful form of bartering. If you're going to consider using bartering, there isn't really a good reason not to use money. It just makes life easier.

If you're afraid of inflation or such, or don't like paper, you could try to "barter" for something that intrinsically acts like money (pre-1964 silver junk coins?) and then barter those for something else you need. You'd want something that is widely wanted or accepted, divisible, and doesn't spoil. Historically these have been certain metals.

[TheLuckyWizard]

You might be interested in this

http://www.becomingminimalist.com/the-m ... iel-suelo/

http://www.amazon.com/The-Man-Who-Quit- ... 1594485690

Very interesting read, more about the person than the money side of it but it does raise some interesting philosophical questions!

[vivacious]

@LuckyWizard thanks for the links. There's another link here too about a family in Germany that does it. http://shine.yahoo.com/financially-fit/ ... 36599.html

@Triangle well it depends. It's prone to inflation, speculation, interest, tax, etc. It's also nice to separate yourself from the global capitalist machine. Why should people making risky investments in London or New York effect you?

I do agree that money is good for things like technology and some other things. Sometimes it is even possible to get that stuff for free too though.

Ya some free time has some cost. I think many people can live on basically no money during the week and then spring for some stuff on the weekend etc.


I wasn't necessarily saying I want to live without money all the way, just explore it a little. It's nice to do a fair amount of things without money. Plus, why does everything have to involve money all the time?

I would love to be able to set myself up to live self-sufficiently and without money. I was tempted to list it as an answer on the lottery thread. But that's not really living without money--it's pre-spending the money. In my mind there's not much difference between spending a lot at the beginning to live money-free or just spending the money monthly like most people.

That depends if living without money pays for itself or not. I think in many cases if you set up a self sufficient way to do something, it can pay for itself after awhile.

It would help to have a small community of people with different talents to fill in the gaps in your knowledge. In that case though, you'd still be bartering or exchanging favors which is a different kind of currency so it would just be living without paper money.

The group would still be without money though. No inflation, it wouldn't be effected if there was an economic collapse, no tax, etc.


I guess ultimately being without money at all might be a little much. Going in that direction is kind of interesting though.

[vivacious]

There seems to be a movie about this. http://livingwithoutmoney.org Maybe I'll try to see it a little later though.

[BeyondtheWrap]

You can live without money by being homeless, so you don't pay for housing, and dumpster diving for all your food.

People can live at any level of money; you have to decide what level is acceptable to you.

Here's more information about Daniel Suelo, the guy that LuckyWizard linked about:

https://sites.google.com/site/livingwithoutmoney/

See the FAQ for specific information about how he approaches each life task without using money.

[vivacious]

I'm taking about something very different than just being a bum.

Thanks for the link though. Check out the German couple I linked to above if you want also.

[riparian]

"Just" being a bum? I guess you haven't tried it?

[BecaS]

In the simplest definition of its construct, money is liquid work. It is your work translated into a light weight, portable, universal form of bartering.

That being said, yes, money has picked up a lot of baggage over the millennia, hasn't it?

It amuses me to compare money to corn, which our predecessors put into jars in liquid form. It's all corn, right? But the translation of corn into moonshine sure picked up some baggage. The revenuers were particularly upset by it- the avoidance of that tax stamp!

Now corn becomes ethanol which gets taxed plenty and has a much different place in our infrastructure than corn on the cob or corn tortillas or corn bread.

Money as liquid work bears a lot of similarities.

Incidentally, did you know that there are indeed IRS rules about bartering?

http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html

[riparian]

Well, I think some people in this thread are using money and capitalism and money in capitalism interchangeably.

[Jpsilver]

I like to believe that if money didn't exist we would still have the level of development we have today or even higher. This assumes that by removing money as an extrinsic motivator, humans would be more intrinsically motivated and would do the work for its own sake and not expecting an extrinsic reward, thus increasing the quality time and effort that is put in every task.

I think this is unlikely though. I think humans are wired to favor extrinsic rewards, so money would be replaced by something else.

[Triangle]

I highly doubt that we'd have the level of civilization we have today without money. My argument is that money allows for extreme specialization of labor and removes the need for trust. Most importantly, it allows for indirect exchanges.

Imagine you have to barter for everything. If you make pianos, but the butcher doesn't want a piano, how are you getting your meat? He has to speculate that a future customer will want a piano. Money, as a medium of exchange, allows you to sell the piano and use the money for anything, like the meat.

Without money, you can only really make deals if you have something the other person wants AND they have something you want, and both these items are of similar value to you two.

[jacob]

Of the more famous ones, social capital seems to be the most direct substitute.
That's perhaps not so surprising given the fame and all.

Substituting technical capital is pretty hard work although I bet this road is more taken.

Then there's the freegan, squatting, ... etc. approach. That's a bit too exciting for me.