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Living without money: what I learned

A moneyless economy shows how our lives are intrinsically linked to the great web of life. In this deep ecology, our security comes from our relationships with people and nature

With little idea of what I was to expect, or how I was to go about it, seven years ago I began living without money. Originally intended as a one-year experiment in ecological living, I wanted to explore how it felt as a human being to live without the trappings and security that money had long-since afforded me. While terrifying and tough to begin with, by the end of the first year I somehow found myself more content, healthier and at peace than I had ever been. And although three years later I made a difficult decision to re-enter the monetary world – to establish projects that would enable others to loosen the grip that money has on their lives – I took from it many lessons that have changed my life forever.

For the first time I experienced how connected and interdependent I was on the people and natural world around me, something I had previously only intellectualised. It is not until you become physically aware of how your own health is entirely reliant on the health of the great web of life, that ideas such as deep ecology absorb themselves into your arteries, sinews and bones.

If the air that filled my lungs became polluted, if the nutrients in the soil that produced my food became depleted, or if the spring water which made up 60% of my body became poisoned, my own health would suffer accordingly. This seems like common sense, but you wouldn’t think so by observing the way we treat the natural world today. Over time, even the boundaries of what I considered to be “I” became less and less clear.

What I took from this was that if we want to secure the long-term health of ourselves and future generations of life, we need to start defending these ecological systems with the same fierceness and determination as we would an attack on our own body, an idea I explore in my new book, Drinking Molotov Cocktails with Gandhi . While we may be able to detach ourselves from the spiralling instances of ecocide that we are now used to hearing about on a regular basis – after all, it tends to be distant and sometimes abstract things that are under threat, and nothing so concrete as our own bodily sovereignty – these attacks are, in the long run, no less serious.

More than anything else, I discovered that my security no longer lay in my bank account, but in the strength of my relationships with the people, plants and animals around me. My character replaced sterling as my currency. If I acted selfishly or without care for those around me, then in the medium-term my ability to meet my own economic needs would diminish. My moneyless economy was one in which helpfulness, generosity and solidarity were rewarded. Contrast that to the worlds of high finance and big business, in which a healthy dose of psychopathy will often help in making it to the top , and selfishness and ruthlessness are the qualities du jour . When we have plenty of money, we can spend our days exploiting the world around us for our own profit, and the checkout guy will still sell us our weekly groceries, the airline still fly us to the Costa del Sol. Without money, act badly enough for long enough and life would become almost impossible.

On a personal level, I realised I was capable of more than I ever imagined. I say this not out of pride, but on the basis that if I – a man who had been much more comfortable with a spreadsheet than a spade – could live from my locality, then almost anybody could. I quickly learned how to farm and to forage, and how to make things from what I found naturally around me. In essence, I discovered how to take care of myself and others in ways that didn’t inflict systemic violence on people and creatures whom I had no idea I was having such a brutal impact on through my shopping habits.

My greatest lesson, however, was that in all of the time I was out there doing my little thing, species after majestic species were being made extinct faster than ever; forests, oceans and rivers were being depleted at untenable rates; and social injustice was rising exponentially, putting more and more money into the hands of those least likely to use it for the common good. This I could no longer ignore. While trying to “be the change you want to see in the world” is something we might all be wise to try, we cannot sit back and watch industrial civilisation drive the great web of life – ourselves included – over the cliff edge. Democracy is meant to hold power to account, but in a world of spin doctors, time poverty and politico-economic illiteracy, democracies are failing to do so. When this happens, activism has to step in.

Yet our activism today has become as tame and timid as our neatly-trimmed gardens. The worlds of political, social and ecological campaigning can no longer continue with activism-as-usual. It is simply not working. None of this is a criticism of the determined people who participate in these movements for change, and I am not suggesting that there are no success stories. But if you step back and honestly look at the state of our ecological and social landscapes, all the indicators of health are on a steep decline. To have some chance of returning these landscapes to vitality, our political landscape needs rewilding.

It is a terrifying, yet exciting, time to be alive. We can turn the biggest crises of our age into something that gives our lives a renewed sense of meaning and purpose. But to do so, I believe we have to upgrade the three r’s of the climate change generation from “reduce, reuse, recycle” to something more befitting of the crises unfolding before us: “resist, revolt, rewild”.

Now is the time to be bold. We need to stop the onslaught of the machine into the natural world using every means that is effective, or before we know it we will have witnessed the devastation and loss of all the beauty that still remains. If we allow that to happen, we shall deserve our fate. Instead, if we fight back then we may earn ourselves a future that, at this dark hour before the dawn, we cannot even imagine yet.

• Mark Boyle’s book, Drinking Molotov Cocktails with Gandhi, is out now. He is asking readers to boycott Amazon and to buy it direct from his publishers .
• Ethical and green living
• Moneyless man

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Cash-free living: how to survive and thrive without money

Christine ottery.

Enjoy a full life with an empty wallet

Most people can't imaging living without cash in their pocket or credit on their card, but that's exactly what Mark ‘Moneyless Man' Boyle did for a whole year. His venture came to an end in November 2009, but he continues to live the ‘freegan' lifestyle, which means eating for free, and he now wants to set up a ‘freeconomy community', allowing people to trade services and skills without monetary exchange.

For the vast majority of us, however, the first thing that has to change before embarking on a cash-free life is our mental framework.

'Primarily, you need to reconnect with the issues in the world and relearn why it's important that we change things, learn a sense of care for the earth,' says Boyle, 'You're not going to go through the inconvenience of moneylessness without a real passion for change and environmental issues.'

Boyle thinks environmentalists need to set an example to the public about radically changing their lives.

'Environmentalism is in fantasy land at the moment - it speaks the speak but is not living it. The time is over to stop supporting industrialisation,' he says, using the example of environmentalists who rail against BP but continue to buy products derived from oil.

Below, the Moneyless Man shares some of his tips on living freestyle:

Have a social life for free Go moneyless. 'There are no end of people who will want to come round and stay to get away from the city if you live in the country,' says Boyle. Failing that, start a weekly skill-sharing group, with book-swaps and clothes-swaps.

Party for free 'I think the key requirement is a sense of adventure. In every aspect of life we're always weighing up comfort and adventure - we've gone too far into comfort,' says Boyle. In the summer, moneyless living is easier: you can go camping, go foraging, go out into the wild, into the forest, have campfires, make your own cider with nothing but fermented apples... Get Richard Mabey's booklet Food for Free and eat from the hedgerows. Bring a guitar or a drum and sleep under the stars. Skinny dip.

Travel for free There are a few key points to remember when hitch-hiking. Obviously look respectable: people won't pick up someone who is dirty and smelly. Location is the main thing: you can stand at a bad point for two hours, so position yourself where cars can pull in safely. Look friendly: have a good attitude; smile. Most people who pick up hitchers want a conversation - they're on a long journey; they're bored.

Put on events for free Boyle staged two large events promoting the freegan way of life to mark the beginning and end of his year without money. He managed to blag a smoothie-maker rental, which usually costs £200 a day, and a pedal-powered stage for music, normally £250, for free - and much more besides. 'The whole thing was goodwill. I learned that when people feel inspired by something, they are more than happy to help out. I started off saying, "I don't want any payment for this, I'm doing it for the love".'

Fixing things for free Check out the Freeconomy project online to hook up with skillsharers who can teach you what you want to know. If you need your bike fixed, for example, search ‘bike' and the website will suggest bicycle mechanics and others. Contact the person and they can come round to show you how to fix your problem; you can then update your own skill base on the website. Boyle says: 'You meet people in your local community, something that builds resilience, which is vital to face future challenges. There is no exchange, no credit system. Freeconomy living is perfect for sharing skills, tools, resources and knowledge.'

Free living/free labour 'I volunteered for a local farm and got a caravan for free off Freecycle to put there, but I don't promote caravan living,' says Boyle. He thinks the way forward is to build low-impact dwellings such as Earthships , which are designed according to permaculture principles, using the waste of industrialised society. Boyle reckons you can build an Earthship for as little as £6,000 out of old car tyres, beer bottles and, of course, earth, so while they are not exactly free, they are very cheap in terms of modern house prices. You can also get free labour if you tell people you want to build one. 'People really want to help out if somebody is building an Earthship, as people want to learn how to build one themselves - there's never any shortage of help.'

Eat for free There are four legs to your food table, says Boyle: foraging; growing your own (there's no way 60 million people can forage); bartering, especially in winter; and waste food. 'Eating out of trash bins is not a model of sustainable living, but when food is grown in South Africa or New Zealand, for it to end up in a bin in Bristol or London is an insult to the environment and the farmer. I'm a big believer in getting food out of bins and into bellies.'

Fertilise your vegetables for free 'Use human manure. The compost toilet is a symbol of sanity.' Boyle assures me it is safe, but you need to know what you're doing - so check out this free online manual on using human manure . For discretion, Boyle suggests growing comfrey besides toilets raised on stilts. Comfrey is great for compost, too.

Bathe for free Wood-burning showers or solar showers are an option. You can grow your own soapwort. You can find a lake, river or sea. 'It's not always comfortable but it's more adventurous,' says Boyle. He thinks the same companies that sell face wash also sell moisturiser to make more money from us. 'Your skin is an ecosystem and you're stripping away all of the oils to replace them with another product. Pharma companies make a lot of cash out of making us feel ugly and then selling us the products that make us feel good and attractive again.'

Health for free 'I'm very pre-emptive about my health. I'm a vegan, I eat completely organic food, complely fresh. I keep myself really happy and I don't get colds or the flu.' Moneyless living is about treating root causes rather than fixes.

The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living by Mark Boyle is published by Oneworld Publications.

Read more from Mark Boyle on Guardian.co.uk

Christine Ottery is a freelance journalist

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The Man Who Quit Money: An Interview with Daniel Suelo

Written by joshua becker · 323 Comments

“Money only exists if two or more people believe it exists.” – Daniel Suelo

When I first heard the story of Daniel Suelo , I was immediately intrigued. After all, Daniel lives entirely without money and has done so for the past 12 years. In 2000, he put his entire life savings in a phone booth, walked away, and has lived moneyless ever since. Most frequently, he lives in the caves and wilderness of Utah where he eats wild vegetation, scavenges roadkill, pulls food from dumpsters, and is sometimes fed by friends and strangers. Daniel proudly boasts that he does not take food stamps or government handouts.

I found myself very interested in hearing what he has learned from the experience and how it might inspire me in my own journey to live with fewer possessions. So I contacted Daniel to see if I could ask him a few questions about his life and what views on money and possessions have shaped his existence. He graciously agreed. This is how our conversation went:

1) Earlier this year, your story was documented in a book titled The Man Who Quit Money . I opened this interview with a brief introduction. Am I missing anything here Daniel? Anything I should be adding to help us get a better understanding of who you are and the life you have chosen to live?

I don’t care for the statement, “Daniel proudly boasts that he does not take food stamps or government handouts,” because it can be construed that I put myself above those who must take food stamps or government handouts. I don’t judge those who do. I merely mention that I don’t take government assistance for the sake of those who might think I’m living on their tax dollars. I do boast about having few possessions and no money, because it’s ironic fun to boast about nothing special (wild creatures, after all, have few possessions or money and it really feels like no big deal), and to boast about what the rest of our commercial society debases.

I will add that I do make a small exception to taking government handouts: I use the public library to maintain my blog , website , do emails, and read books. This does cause ire in people searching for loopholes in my lifestyle. In my blog comments, a woman once responded to their anger by declaring that she pays taxes and doesn’t use the library, and that she donates all her library time to me. Then they were quiet.

2) Thanks so much for taking the time for this interview. I find it interesting that so many of the articles highlighting your story include something similar to this line: Suelo “came from a good family and has been to college. He was not mentally ill, nor an addict. His decision appears to have been an act of free will by a competent adult.” So, for starters, you are clearly not a crazy man. Correct?

A crazy man does not think himself crazy, so my opinion on the matter is meaningless :-) People will have to judge my sanity for themselves.

But it would be nice if we lived in a world that considered it crazy to cause harm to ourselves, others, and our environment or to praise those who do cause such harm. Then we’d have to say we live in a truly crazy civilization. A sane society would consider it crazy to kill living things and destroy food and water supplies in order to amass something that nobody can eat or drink, like gold, silver, and money. It’s crazy to sacrifice reality to the idol of illusion.

3) The thinking that led to your journey into willful moneylessness evolved by degrees during your travels. Could you share with us some of the foundational beliefs that have evolved in your life that led you to make this decision to give up money entirely?

My first thought of living moneyless came when I was a child. In my Evangelical Christian upbringing, I wondered why, if we were followers of Jesus, we didn’t practice his teachings–namely giving up possessions and doing not for the sake of reward (money and barter), but giving freely and receiving freely.

When I left home for college, I studied other religions and found that all the world’s major religions teach giving up possessions and doing not for the sake of reward. If all the separated witnesses are saying the same thing, it must be true. Ironically, few practice the one thing they all agree upon in word. What would happen if we actually practiced this stuff, I thought.

My dad also took us camping a lot, and I was a nature freak. I couldn’t help but see how perfectly balanced nature was, and it ran on no money. Why, then, couldn’t we?

As an adult, I thought it through more thoroughly. Nature’s economy is a pay-it-forward economy. This means one sows, another reaps, ad infitum. For example, a bear takes a raspberry, and the raspeberry bush demands nothing in return. The Bear takes with zero sense of obligation, zero guilt. The bear then poops somewhere else, not only providing food for soil organisms, but also propagating raspberry seeds. You never see 2 wild creatures consciously bartering. There are no accountants worrying what the bush will get in return. This is exactly why it works, because nobody knows how it works! There is no consciousness of credit and debt in nature. Consciousness of credit and debt is knowledge of good and evil, valuing one thing and devaluing another. Consciousness of credit and debt is our fall from Grace. Grace means gratis, free gift.

My next impetus for living moneyless came from observing the world economy and politics. Do our economy and politics function well? It’s self-evident, isn’t it?

My next impetus for living moneyless was to find authenticity for myself. To do out of one’s heart is to be real. To do for somebody, expecting something from them, is ulterior motivation, which is to not be real, which is to prostitute oneself.

My last impetus for living moneyless was to heal myself. Okay, I guess I’ll talk about my craziness. To heal myself was to first see myself as crazy, and only them could I become free of craziness. I was suffering clinical depression. Mental illness is rooted in having unnecessary, thoughts and to let go of unnecessary thoughts is to free oneself from mental illness. This is basic Buddhist philosophy. It is the philosophy of all the ancient religions. To cling to thoughts is to possess thoughts and this outwardly manifests itself in having unnecessary physical possessions. We accumulate what we don’t need out of fear and anxiety. This is true craziness. Unnecessary thoughts and unnecessary physical possessions (including possessing people) are inextricably linked. To accumulate unnecessary possessions is not to live in abundance, as we’re led to believe, but is to live in scarcity. Why would we have too much stuff if we believed the universe was abundant? Why would we worry if we weren’t crazy? Worry is simply lack of faith, faith that everything we need is in the here and now.

4) Your spirituality is clearly an important part of your journey. In what ways, have your spiritual beliefs strengthened you for this journey and lifestyle?

I mentioned above that this is about faith. Faith is eliminating unnecessary thought, trusting that everything we need comes as we need it, whether it is the right thoughts or the right possessions. Faith is being grounded in the Eternal Present. This is the common truth of the world’s religions.

5) What are some of the most important lessons about money/people/society you have personally learned over the past 12 years? And did any of these lessons surprise you?

Most important is that I’ve learned our true nature lives moneyless, giving freely and receiving freely. Even the most staid CEO is human underneath, and gives and receives freely with friends and family. By cultivating this nature in myself, I can see it in others, and it can be cultivated in others. When our real selves are cultivated, the gift economy is cultivated, our unreal selves (based on ulterior motivation) and all the nonsense drops away.

I have been surprised at the intensely angry reaction thousands of people have had at my living moneyless. It used to bother me, but now I realize that anger doesn’t come from people’s true nature, but from the facade they build up. The facade is threatened by reality. Who wants to hear that the basis of our commercial civilization is an illusion? Money only exists if two or more people believe it exists. Money is not a physical substance, but merely a belief in the head. Money is credit, and credit literally means belief (e.g. credibility). Money is literally a creed, the most agreed-upon creed, or religion, in the world. And what fundamentalists won’t get angry if you question their creed?

6) The reality of today’s society is that most people will never make the full leap into moneylessness like you have. Do you believe that your lifestyle still offers important inspiration for individuals and families? And if so, in what ways?

As I said, we all live moneyless at our core, in our everyday actions with friends, family, and even strangers. People tell me almost every day that they find living this way inspiring and even comforting. Even if people don’t intend on giving up money, they can still find that it isn’t the end of the world if they lose their money. If you are not religious, it is comforting to be reminded that life has flourished in balance for millions of years without money, and why should it fall apart without money now? Nature evolved you from an amoeboid to a human over millions of years, with zero money, so why should nature give up on you now? How is it that, when natural disasters (tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis) hit towns and cities, people suddenly forget about money and start helping each other? It’s comforting that we have a true nature beneath the falseness and ulterior motivation of commercial civilization.

And if you are religious, it’s comforting to know there is profound truth at the core of your religion (whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Sikh) that actually works if you practice it, that it isn’t all a lie. If we don’t practice the core truth of giving up possessions and ulterior motivation that every religion teaches, then of course our religion becomes a destructive lie, as we see all around us.

7) What are the practical steps individuals can take to free themselves from their pursuit (and bondage) to money – even if they will never live entirely moneyless?

People get overwhelmed unless they realize that all the tools they have are here and now, and steps can be taken right here and now.

Everybody, no matter how entrenched they are in the money system, can freely give and freely receive. Freely giving and freely receiving is our true nature, is true human-ness. And everybody is human. As I said earlier, it’s about being real, cultivating our true nature, and everything else falls into place, and all the falsehood drops away, no matter what station in life people are in. Even if somebody is totally skeptical about what I am doing, I challenge them to make it their goal to be totally real, with themselves and with every human interaction, and I propose they will then know whether or not I’m living a pipe dream.

Somebody once commented that our cities and towns could not function without money. But I say they and the world can’t function right now in the present system.

Take classic American suburbia, for example. People don’t know their neighbors, and everybody has their own cars, computers, TVs, lawn mowers, washing machines, etc, etc, as well as stockpiles of food and land they could grow food on. All we need is right here, but the only thing that’s holding us back is not physical reality, but belief, dogma. What if we actually spoke to our neighbors and agreed to share, like we learned in kindergarten and in church? What if we realized we could share cars, computers, washing machines, have dinners together, etc, which would not only save us expense, but would save expense on the environment, and, as a bonus, put smiles on our lonely faces? Then cities and technology would start serving us, rather than us serving them. But what’s holding us back? Not reality, not scarcity, but only our thinking!

As far as going all the way and living without money, people often ask me to teach them survival skills. Often I feel like I don’t know many skills, that it’s really about determination and getting up the confidence more than actual skill. Sometimes I tell folks to imagine something really silly: what if somebody offered you a million dollars to live without money for a year? I guarantee most people would figure out how to do it, skilled or no. This is about finding a determination, a motivation greater than a million dollars!

8) I’m curious how concerned you are about spreading this message of living free from money. I know you had the book written about you, you maintain your website , and you have agreed to this interview and various others. Is there a message you believe you have inside that is important to get out? And do you look forward to your story continuing to spread?

Yes, I now have a strong urge to spread the message. At first I just wanted to live my own life, whether or not anybody else took notice or not. Then I realized a message was errupting in me that I could no more suppress than an erupting volcano. Our society is not sustainable and we are not only heading rapidly into, but most the world has already reached disaster, due directly to our being trapped by our own beliefs. I want to shout this out to the world. But talk isn’t enough. It must be talk with action, right now. We could debate whether or not Paul Revere was trying to gain attention for himself, or we could simply take notice that the British are invading and we have to get off our butts!

Thanks so much for your time Daniel, I really do appreciate it. Your experience is unique – at least, in our society. As a result, it provides each of us an opportunity to reevaluate your own opinions and views on how we choose to live. And for that, I am very thankful.

To discover more about Daniel’s specific journey or find the answers to the questions swirling in your head, I’ll refer you to the  FAQ on his website .

But before you leave, what parts of Daniel’s story resonated most with you? Did you discover any new insight or inspiration during the interview? Let us know in the comment section below. I’m interested to hear how his story is challenging others.

June 26, 2023 at 3:44 PM

I think part of the problem today about global warming, hunger, energy wasting, etc., etc. got to do actually with consumerism. If we would focus on reducing our consumption habits, the amount of energy we generate will be reduced considerably.

Two shirts cost twice the amount of energy (not exactly but to ease the math) than one shirt: buy only one shirt; 1/4 the size of a 3000 sqft house is 750 sqft, and 1/4 energy wasted: buy smaller houses.

The problem is that consuming less implies less companies, less employment, and may prompt an economic crisis in the world that clashes with powerful people’s interests. That is why capitalism (and money) is so archaic for today’s conservationism needs because it is not sustainable.

The solution is not creating an electric car because at the end of the day it left behind pretty badly footprint on earth: battery waste, energy to produce complicated vehicles, heavy mining, the amount of water waste (and tailing) produced or needed for exploitation, the refurbishing of the distribution grid to prevent blackouts when all vehicles are electric…more waste on construction and logistics…etc. Bravo, we saved the world!!

One possible solution is to find an alternative to capitalism where we all can survive, and win, not only the powerful. Starting by reducing consumerism, disregarding marketing cheap manipulation tricks that creates unnecessary needs, share more with people instead of staying grabbed to the cell phone, etc.

Interested in living money less. I think money is something that has been the main cause of humanity distress, discomfort, injustice, and sadness today.

February 10, 2023 at 9:41 PM

I think his lifestyle definitely is commendable to try to live differently. As a Christian, my focus is to live for the Lord. The Amish give up many conveniences as well. Biblically, living a simpler life where we are free from our love of pleasure is good. However, he is not living without money. He uses public libraries, accepts rides from people, and a whole host of other goods and services other people have paid money for (even the Amish borrow other people’s phones). If anything I would say he has learned rely on the grace of others.

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Living Life Without Money: Is it Possible?

Samuel Mitchell

Updated on: 01/03/2024

Most of us believe that money is absolutely necessary for living a good life. We also believe that it’s hard for anyone to live life without money. In fact, most of us think that having more money means we can have a better life. That’s true to some extent.

However, there’re countless people in the world that survive without money. No, I’m not talking about remote tribes or people living away from civilization as we know it.

Nor am I speaking about people that are helpless and have no money- or the persons we generally call or know as poor.

Instead, I am speaking about what happens if you decide not to make money or you don’t wish to earn anymore. Clearly, you would wish to know whether you can survive without money.

Therefore, I will start by telling you that it’s possible to survive without money. I mean, you can survive with absolutely no money in the world, in the US or even in other places around the world.

I will begin by explaining why we need money. That would help better understand if you can survive without money.

Reasons We Need Money

Obviously, we need money to buy things. That’s the main reason we work or do business. We work for a certain time every day in return for our wages or income.

That’s possible because we’re giving something that people, such as an employer or our customers want. We need money for three basic things: food, clothing and shelter.

It’s almost impossible to live without these three basic necessities of life. Food is necessary for our physical and mental wellness, clothing is needed because we live in a civilized society and shelter- or a roof over our heads- is an absolute need since we can’t sleep unprotected against weather changes, insects and animals.

Additionally, we have certain modern-day needs, including telephones or mobile and entertainment and transportation.

If all these needs are met automatically or available for free, obviously, we wouldn’t require money. In fact, the biggest part of our income- or about 50 per cent- is spent on these basic and modern-day needs.

In our era, we also have wants. These could include a high-end house, an expensive car or even the latest smartphone and computers. However, it's worth remembering that these are simply wants. We’re not going to die or suffer bad health if our wants aren’t fulfilled.

When I ask, can you survive without money and say that it’s possible, the most important thing to know is that we can get all our basic necessities without money. However, it is difficult to meet our wants without money.

Therefore, to answer the question: can you survive without money and know how it’s possible, continue reading.

How to Survive Without Money?

As I mention earlier, there’re three basic necessities or basic needs of all humans. If we take care of these in some or the other way, it is possible that we can survive without money. As a matter of fact, several thousand people- if not millions- are already doing so, either out of necessity or because they want to live that way.

1. Food for Free

Obviously, none of us can go hungry. Maybe we can fast for a few hours or even a couple of days if we wish. We simply can’t go starving. There’re several ways to get free food, just in case you didn’t know. I’m not talking about begging for food.

One of the best ways to get free food is by growing it yourself. If you have a house or are staying somewhere, it is possible to grow vegetables and fruits. The more you grow, the better.

Instead of selling the product for cash, it is possible to barter them at restaurants and diners for free food. Any restaurant or diner will accept fresh fruit and vegetables as long as they meet their quality.

Then we also have community kitchens and charity kitchens that provide soup, bread and other meals completely free. If you wish, you could have meals at any of these places.

Furthermore, you could work part-time at some small job at a restaurant or two to get free food. Generally, most restaurants offer free meals to their workers during their duty timings.

Another way, which lots of people are using now after the Covid-19 pandemic is by asking supermarkets to give away any products that are nearing expiry or whose containers are slightly damaged.

You can get everything from breakfast cereal to snacks and food grains or meat in this way. That’s because stores and restaurants can’t sell these food products. Nor can they be returned to the wholesaler or manufacturer.

As a matter of fact, there’s also a community that believes in lowering food waste. Members of this community go around foraging for food at trashcans and containers outside restaurants and supermarkets to take canned food and packaged food that’s been thrown away.

According to their testimonies, this food is perfectly edible and hasn’t even spoiled, except for the outside packaging, which might be damaged in some cases.

2. Clothing

Now that we’ve learned about where to get free food, the next step is to find free clothing. Again, this might sound impossible or even ridiculous to some of you.

However, I can assure you that it’s perfectly legit, and you can actually get free clothes in the ways that I am about to describe. Obviously, these clothes might not exactly be fashionable or trendy. Yet, they can suit your needs for all weathers.

The Salvation Army is your first stop to get free clothes. They have offices and counters or even stores all across the US. Furthermore, Salvation Army gets tons of clothes donated by people for the needy.

You can always request them for some clothes and get them. In fact, some of these clothes might also be branded.

The next place is to find a clothes recycler. They usually buy clothes or get them free for recycling. If you can, check FreeCycle.org because it’s the largest community for recycling clothes in the US.

They recycle used clothes to make fibre for use in paper, more clothes and industrial needs. They operate across the US, so you can easily locate them near your place. Any counter or recycler affiliated with freecycle.org will happily give you away a few clothes for free.

Also, a sure way to get free clothes is through churches. A lot of churches in the US collect clothes from their parishioners to give away to the needy. Contact any church nearby, and you can find if they are indeed having a pile of clothes waiting to be given to the poor. If they have, you can surely get some clothes that you might like.

Now comes the most difficult part. We have found food and clothing. But what about shelter? Millions of people around the world sleep on sidewalks and in parks every night.

Some even huddle into vehicles or trains and buses when they’re parked.  A few others sleep outside stores or other public places such as bus stations and railway stations. Where possible, people sneak into an airport for a restful snooze.

However, to survive without money, you don’t need to do anything so drastic as living outdoors in the open and without a roof over your head. Therefore, here’re some ways to stop paying rent and start living free.

The best bet in such cases is finding a job that provides free lodging or housing. As a matter of fact, there’re plenty of places where you can get a job that offers free lodging. These include jobs as security staff, restaurant helpers, shift workers and cleaners.

Staff at gardens and other public places, including cemeteries and cremation grounds, also get free accommodations, though these could be unpleasant.

If you don’t find such as job, head out in the open and camp yourself at any place of your choice where camping is allowed or at least isn’t against the law.

Many people camp permanently at public camping grounds or in open spaces. All it needs is some sort of fabric and some wood to make a shelter.

The third way to get free accommodation is to become a member of organizations such as couchsurfing.com . As a community member, you can spend the night on a ‘couch’ with other members.

Of course, you wouldn’t be getting a lot of comfort here since the stay is free of cost. Yet, it will save you the hassles of staying outdoors. We also have community shelters that house the destitute and homeless.

You don’t have to be destitute or homeless to find shelter at these places. At best, you might require some identification documents to prove you’re not a criminal hiding from the cops.

Community shelters can be found in most large and medium-sized cities across the USA. Check whether there’s one in your city and find out how you can spend a night there. Generally, all residents of these community shelters are in for the long term.

Other Needs Now

Since we’re aware of how to meet our basic needs of food, clothing and shelter, let’s find ways and means to survive without money for other things that we would need. Obviously, we all need hygiene and some form of communication and entertainment.

1. Personal Hygiene

Truck stops, hiker trails and camper trails are the best places to find places for a free shower. Of course, you would require some soap and other stuff too, which I will discuss later in this article. Among these, truck stops are the best because you can get free showering facilities there.

Look also for camper parks. Since campers and those living in vehicles such as caravans also need hygiene, there’re some places where you can find free showers and toilets.

For some persons that are living without money because they want the thrill claim, heading to nature and bathing in a stream, river or lake or pond can be very healthy and refreshing too. Obviously, this isn’t possible during winter or cold weather.

If you’re living somewhere and wish to go without money, obviously, there would be a bathroom and toilet on the premises. You can also use a bathroom or toilet at some public places such as parks and shrines.

2. Soap and Other Stuff

Ask hotels to give you some of their free soap. Some hotels offer complimentary toiletries to their guests. These include soap, shampoo, body lotion and other such stuff. Even when a guest doesn’t use them, the hotel disposes of them because they’re considered as used stuff.

You can request any hotel in your area to give you this soap and shampoo as well as body lotions. At truck stops, you might get lucky to find some free soap in the form of samples left by a representative of a company.

You can also get some free soap for washing at laundromats and other such places. Overall, finding soap is not a difficulty in any manner.

3. Communications and Internet

Public libraries can meet your need for free Internet if you wish to use it. After all, why would you require any Internet if you’ve decided to survive without money?

Other places to look for free communications and the Internet are sales counters and stores of telecom companies and their franchisees. They usually have a computer for people to use and experience their products and services. And you could make a couple of calls from such places.

4. Entertainment

Without money, you wouldn’t be able to watch a movie in a cinema hall. However, there is no need for concern. It is free and easy to get some entertainment at community events that are not charged. Also, spend some time with nature watching birds or the ocean or a river.

On some special occasions, giant TV screens are put up in public places to show events. You can get free entertainment here, as well. We also have street-side entertainers that play music and collect money from people around.

You needn’t pay, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy their music or acts for free.

Barter Your Skills for Goods

And finally, the best replacement for money is to offer your skills and barter them for goods. That means you do some tasks for people, and instead of cash, you get any stuff that you like.

Working at stores and getting paid in goods can get you essentials such as soap and food or even clothing. There’s no limit to places where your skills would prove useful. You can also barter your work for food or other things.

In Conclusion

If you see any of these ways above and try to use them, it’s possible to live and survive without money. I don’t deny that money is important. However, the lack of money doesn’t mean that life is bad or has ended. As I have just shown you, there are different and legit ways and means to get all the basic necessities of life without paying even a single Dollar. All it requires is your effort and the willingness to survive without money. While you needn’t be poor to use these ways to survive without money, such ways can also show how to save a lot of money that we spend on useless stuff.

Samuel Mitchell is a financial analyst with expertise in investment research and risk assessment. With a background in finance and advanced certifications, he delivers accurate and concise financial analysis. Samuel's writing style is precise and data-driven, providing actionable insights for readers. Explore the world of finance with him and make informed investment decisions.

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The Possibility of Life Without Money

The prospect of a “cashless” society is upon us. But could ordinary life be “moneyless” entirely?

• Nathan J. Robinson

A while back, I wrote an article on the decommodification of the toilet . In Europe, people often have to pay to use public toilets. I was surprised on a visit to England when, in a country that offers totally free public healthcare, I had to fumble in my pockets for coins just to take a “wee.” (As the expulsion of urine is known in my home country.) In the United States, this experience is unknown, because there was a successful, unsung social movement to abolish paid toilets. I pointed out in my article how wonderfully freeing it is not to have to think about money when you go to the bathroom. “Decommodifying” the lavatory means your relationship to the lavatory is no longer transactional (I pay money, I am given permission to urinate). You just go. 

Public libraries operate like this, too, and many parks, and fire departments . You do not have to pay per book at the library. You just go and check out what you need. The fire department does not send you a bill. It just comes to your house and puts the fire out. At a good park, you just go to the park, rather than having to purchase a ticket.

Healthcare in the United States, unlike healthcare in Britain, does not operate this way. You do not simply go to your doctor, get treated, and leave. There is money involved. You must pay for what you receive, and often you must spend time negotiating with your insurance company to get them to pay. As a result, a person’s thinking about their medical care is bound up with thinking about their personal finances. They must ask questions like: is it worth going to a doctor over this, or can I afford an ambulance? We take this for granted, but it’s helpful to think about how absurd this would seem if it was how we ran fire protection. If it cost $50,000 to have a housefire put out, people would hesitate to call firefighters. They would probably try very hard to put out fires themselves, and many people without much money would die trying to avoid an expensive bill. This is a good reason why fire departments no longer operate on the private model that they used to, and are now a free-at-point-of-use service.

Conservatives sometimes point out that when we lefties say we want something to be “free,” it is not really free, because it must be paid for by the government. This is correct. It is not free, it is “free at point of use,” meaning that it is funded out of a collective pool of wealth rather than by individuals when they use the service. A good reason for making things free at point of use is that it makes them less stressful, and people can focus on fulfilling their needs and desires rather than on thinking about money. One reason universal free college would be a wonderful thing is that it would let prospective students think about the question “What am I interested in studying?” rather than “What can I afford to study?” Free healthcare lets people’s healthcare decisions be based on their healthcare needs rather than an equation involving both their needs and their bank account. Free public transit means that when you want to get on the subway, all you do is go and get on the subway. We can take out all the turnstiles, forget swiping MetroCards. 

There is something very appealing about not having to stop all day to make micro-level financial decisions that take time and energy away from what we are actually trying to do. (How many times have you missed a bus or train because you were still fiddling with the ticket machine?) The same is true in every relationship of exchange. When I go to a coffee shop, the time I spend having my card swiped and having to enter the tip and sign the thing, and the time the barista spends processing my payment rather than making coffee, is unproductive. It is a “transaction cost.” It is a means to an end. I find restaurants immensely stressful places because of how much time I spend thinking about The Check. Have they brought it yet? Are we going to split it? Oh God, what if my card is rejected? How much of a tip do I leave on this? Sometimes you need to leave, but you can’t leave, because of The Check. In a hypothetical “free restaurant,” you would simply go, eat, and leave. But restaurants are not free at point of use. 

When I wrote my article about decommodifying toilets, I pointed out what a bothersome nuisance it is to constantly be having to undergo the process of exchange. Putting coins in the door of a toilet is absurd, and as the American example shows, unnecessary. You could just let people walk in. But a techno-libertarian type challenged me on this. He (you knew the gender when I said techno-libertarian) said Well, Actually technology is taking us toward a “cashless” society. Payments are getting easier and easier. Yes, fumbling with coins is ridiculous. So is having to swipe a credit card and punch in your PIN. But payments are getting swifter with things like Apple Pay. We can imagine that in the near future, you would simply be able to tap your phone on the bathroom door and be let in, the money deducted from your account. Pay toilets could therefore be convenient to pay for.

Now, my libertarian comrade (they hate when you call them that) did not sell me on the virtues of paid toilets. He did, however, get me thinking about the increasing ease of payments. I got my first smartphone recently, after holding out for many years, and I was immediately impressed with how easy it was to pay for things. I do not have to put in my credit card information every time. I simply look at the phone, it identifies my face (creepy and worrisome, but convenient), and I press “pay.” Use DoorDash or Lyft and you do not have to enter any bank information after the first time. In fact, so long as you know you have plenty of money in your bank account, you just pick what you want and order it. You do not even think about the money. The prices are not changing your decision, because you know can afford whatever you pick. Therefore: for you, the person who can afford any of the various options among which you are choosing, the prices are virtually superfluous information. You need them there to make sure you aren’t being bilked. But they almost cease to matter.

I have a very different relationship with money now that I am not poor. (I was only ever student-poor, meaning I had no money, not poverty-poor.) When I go to the grocery store, I simply pick out the things I want and take them to the checkout. I do not even look at their prices, because even if one yogurt costs $2 and one costs $4, the difference does not make a difference to me, as I can afford either yogurt and prefer to pick the most satisfying one over spending my time doing a mental cost-benefit analysis of whether the extra $2 will bring $2 extra of satisfaction. It won’t, but I also do not care, because what does give me lots of satisfaction is choosing yogurts purely out of desire. 

At the checkout, they ring me up, and I see the price, and they hand me a receipt. I throw away the receipt. I glance at the price, but usually it’s somewhere around what I expected it to be. But I don’t have to think about the specific amount very much, because I know that I am only ever buying “a reasonable amount of groceries” and that my bank account can accommodate “a reasonable amount of groceries,” so there is never going to be an issue. When I had no money, things were different. I was thinking about every additional banana and whether I could afford it. Money was the central thing I thought about at the grocery store, because when you have little of it, you need to make decisions like “is the more expensive yogurt worth it?” Penny-pinching adds up over time, and if you make hundreds of decisions that help you save $1 or $2 on each transaction you may have hundreds more dollars each month, enough to make the difference between being able to pay a bill and not being able to pay it.

Personally, I am lucky. I have a steady job that covers my bills. So they are all on auto-pay. I don’t think about my bills. I try to conserve electricity and to keep the air conditioner at a reasonable temperature and not amass a giant data bill on the phone, but so long as I am reasonable and prudent I don’t need to think very much. I’m noticing more and more that, given cashless transfer technology, money is playing a smaller and smaller role in my everyday life. When I order things online, the price is helpful to tell me that they’re not unreasonably expensive. There are $800 table lamps and I don’t want to order one of those by accident. But if I turn on a filter that says “only show me table lamps under $150,” the variations within the category don’t necessarily matter to me. If it’s in my budget, I can have it.

I think a big part of the dream that many socialists have is to be released from having a life that is ruled by money. The first priority, of course, is the abolition of class and making sure every person is free. But there is a certain dislike for exchange relationships generally. We want a world where you give someone something because you would like them to have it, not because you are looking to get something out of them. William Morris, in News from Nowhere , depicts a utopia in which an artisan spends months crafting a gorgeously painted smoking pipe, only to give it away to someone who saw it and admired it. For Morris, there was something beautiful in this. If you want it, it’s yours, no questions asked.

The interesting thing is that for people who are wealthy, it is already almost possible to be released from a life in which thoughts about money play a significant part. Of course, the rich actually think constantly about money. But it’s not because they have to. You can pay people to think about your money and just go and enjoy your life. They “never have to worry about money again.”

Let me describe to you an imagined place where money has virtually disappeared from people’s lives:

Pleasant Acres is one of those awful Florida retirement villages full of Trump supporters where everyone plays pickleball and does salsa dancing. We are not here interested in the cultural vibrancy of Pleasant Acres or the politics of its residents. Instead, we are concerned with the internal economy. Residents pay $100,000 per year to live in Pleasant Acres. That price secures them access to the following:

• A golf cart  
• Golf equipment, if they do not have it already
• Access to the tennis courts, swimming pool, and gymnasium
• Dance classes
• Academic classes at the “university” (unaccredited but with excellent instructors)
• 3 meals a day at any one of the 6 “restaurants” in the village, plus unlimited snacks
• 2 baskets of groceries per week at the community “store” 
• Rental of whatever art they would like from the art warehouse, to put in their condo
• Art supplies if they want to make art at the studio
• Medical care at the clinic and on-call nursing
• Use of the library
• Unlimited cocktails
• Protection by a private security firm
• As many plants as they would like for their condo, from the nursery
• Up to 3 pets from the pet repository (residents may also bring their own pets. If they would like to leave Pleasant Acres and keep a repository pet they must pay $500). 
• Maintenance of their condo
• Water, electricity, and internet for their condo
• Participation in the full social life of the village including game nights, film screenings, visiting lecturers, community hoedowns, speed-dating
• Up to 10 subscriptions to newspapers and magazines of their choice
• A certain number of guest passes for many amenities

I am sure you see already where I am going with this. It is possible to live in Pleasant Acres, have your $100,000 deducted annually from your bank account, and go through your day to day life without thinking about money at all. I do not mean “not thinking about money because you have so much that the cost of each transaction doesn’t matter to you.” I mean that there are no internal transactions taking place between the residents and the management. Getting a newspaper isn’t deducted from your $100,000. It’s inclusive. The facility might track internal usage of the amenities, or it might not. It might have an internal pricing system, deducting the cost of a pet or newspaper from a person’s $100,000, but it also might not, and could just look at the income coming in versus the total expenses going out in each category. 

The system here is not communism, because there is private property. The residents do not own the facility, which is run by a private company. The “means of production” are in private hands. But within Pleasant Acres, there is no “market.” Now, the case of art supplies is quite interesting, because what happens if a person makes a painting that they then want to sell? Of course, Pleasant Acres could say that use of their art supplies means they own any paintings that are produced, but they don’t say that. The gentle seniors of the village may sell each other whatever they wish. In practice, however, nobody has ever sold a painting to another resident. Usually they just give them to someone who seems to want it. This is because getting money for your painting would not have much of a point. All of your needs are taken care of. You are satisfied. You want for nothing. What would you buy with the money? A big television? They have those at the Electronics Station, and if you call, one will be brought to your condo. 

Now, some people drink more than their fair share of the unlimited cocktails, so that if everyone guzzled as many mimosas as Norma, or as many martinis as Walt, the place would swiftly have to start cutting costs elsewhere or face ruin. But some residents don’t drink, so it averages out, and the facility adjusts its annual fee to make sure that its total income covers the total amount of its expenditures. Within a single institution, then, market relationships and commodification have been functionally eliminated as part of day to day life. Yes, there is the $100,000 coming annually from people’s bank accounts. But people who come here know they have enough to cover the rest of their lives. The $100,000 is something they thought about once, for ten seconds, before signing up. 

Institutions like this exist. In fact, the funny thing is, many modern corporations are kind of like this internally. In People’s Republic of Walmart, Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski talk about how giant corporations are actually “market-free” zones on the inside. If I am an employee and I need office supplies, I go to the supply closet, not the supply store. If a department needs resources, it puts in a request for them. Of course, the upper levels will often evaluate the cost of those things in determining whether to grant the request, depending on what those things are. But we have something much closer in structure to a centralized “command economy” than a marketplace. In fact, Phillips and Rozworski note that when Sears tried to introduce an “internal market” whereby different departments had to compete with each other rather than simply taking from the communal resource pool and working for the collective good, the project was a disaster. A corporation instead works more like a military, supplying people on the basis of need. You can think about these Silicon Valley “campuses,” where amenities and even food are supplied gratis. Here’s a description of the “Googleplex”:

One of the most often cited perks of working at Google is the food. Google feeds its employees well. If you work at the Googleplex, you can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner free of charge. There are several cafés located throughout the campus, and employees can eat at any of them. The main café is Charlie’s Place. The café takes its name from Google’s first lead chef, Charlie Ayers. Before creating meals for Googlers, Ayers was the chef for the Grateful Dead. Although Ayers left Google in 2005, the café still bears his name. The café has several stations, each offering different kinds of cuisine. Options range from vegetarian dishes to sushi to ethnic foods from around the world. Google’s culture promotes the use of fresh, organic foods and healthy meals. But when everything is free and you can eat whenever you want, it’s easy to go overboard. That’s where the Google 15 comes in. It refers to the 15 pounds many new Google employees put on once they start taking advantage of all the meals and snacks.

You can eat whatever you want! For free! Of course it’s not free at all, because you’re a servant of an evil corporate behemoth. But it’s free at the point of use, and for good reason. It’s nice to just be able to go and eat without having to think about money. Google could pay its employees extra by the average amount that each costs them in food, and then charge them at the point of use. But they have decided that there is no point to this. And employees seem to like this a lot, judging by how much they use it.

Now, the “Google 15” actually usefully brings us to a serious objection to free-at-point-of-use goods and services. When people don’t have to make cost-benefit calculations, they tend to use more of a thing. Mainstream economics often assumes we have “unlimited wants” and that the things we want are scarce, meaning there’s not enough of them to satisfy our wants. Pricing things helps keep us from having to “ration” them. Thus the British NHS has to decide how to give out scarce healthcare through having a central body decide how resources are apportioned, whereas the American “free market” healthcare system uses the magic of prices to decide who gets what. One fear about Medicare For All is that it will lead people to consume “too much” healthcare, because there won’t be any cost to them for doing so. The Google 15 shows that if food is free, people will eat more of it.

But the fact that “free at point of use” makes people use more of something is not actually a bad thing. I talked about how if fire departments charged people, homeowners would be disincentivized from calling the fire department, which would actually be very bad. In healthcare, it’s bad that people are discouraged from calling ambulances. If the public library charged to check out books, fewer people would read and learn. And in Pleasant Acres, the whole point is that seniors are liberated from the bother of having to think about transactions and get to simply enjoy things.

A funny thing happened at Pleasant Acres after a few years. First, management realized that full-time workers in the facility were costing about $110,000 each. So a program was introduced whereby you could have all the amenities of the facility, plus $10,000 annually, if you were willing to work full time. Many seniors therefore did not even engage with any direct financial transactions with the facility. They gave according to their ability, and took according to their need, in addition to having a “Basic Income.” A greater and greater percentage of residents started to do this to the point where the entire workforce, other than the company’s management, was composed of residents. Eventually, Pleasant Acres was so pleasant that it attracted many visitors, who liked to take its classes and attend the movie nights. The visitors were charged money (unless they were from elsewhere in the Pleasant Acres Network), and eventually the intake from visitors became substantial. At this point, Pleasant Acres did something interesting: it cut the workweek in half, and it entirely eliminated the $100,000 annual fee, instead simply requiring 20 hours a week of work from all residents. Supplies the facility needed to purchase from outside (new lawnmowers, electronics, food, medical equipment) were paid for with the tourist revenue. But much was made inside the village, and all the work was simply done by the village residents. Performing the work guaranteed that when you eventually became unable to do work, you were still allowed to live and use all the amenities as before.

There was, of course, eventually a labor uprising, because the seniors of the village realized at a certain point that upper management was extraneous. They refused any longer to let extra tourist revenue go to the company’s profits, and insisted it be split among the workers equally. Because the company had made the mistake of becoming dependent on the village residents, it was forced to democratize. 

And thus was Socialism In One Retirement Village achieved. 

This is a silly story, with many implausible aspects, and I am not asking you to believe that rich old Trump voters are going to become syndicalists and make a little socialist utopia. Instead, I am only trying to show that eliminating markets, money, and exchange within certain spheres is quite readily conceivable. There is an empirical question about whether, in any given sphere, it is possible to do so without unacceptable rationing. But free market economists tend to cast doubt on the possibilities for market-free resource allocation, because they start with the assumption that people have “infinite wants” and are selfish rational maximizers. This is plainly false, or at least true only in the aggregate (if you have one person who does have “infinite wants,” such as Jeff Bezos , then you might say “humanity as a whole” has infinite wants even if most of us could be satisfied with a modest amount). The assumption is that if you give endless free cocktails, you will swiftly run out of cocktails. But that is not always true. Google did not run out of food by offering free food. People got a bit heavier, but they didn’t gorge themselves to death. Yes, you may have to establish a theoretical upper bound of what people can take, which is a form of rationing. (Pleasant Acres rationed newspapers and magazines, by limiting subscriptions to 10.) But if that boundary is higher than what any individual person will want, then in practice you will never have to “enforce” any rationing. (In practice, if your limit is set too low, i.e. it turns out many people want 12 magazines and nobody wants pets, you might alter your resource allocation so that you still aren’t actually depriving anyone of anything they desire.)

There is an old criticism of “socialist” planning called the “ economic calculation problem ” developed by right-wing economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. The idea is that “rational” allocations of resources cannot occur without market prices, which are used to give information about how much people prefer what, and thus direct production. “Central planners” simply do not have the information necessary to decide what to produce. Centrally planned economies have been seen to vindicate this idea. Now, as we have seen, centrally planned institutions without “internal markets” are plainly possible; a library’s acquisitions and distributions are centrally planned based on the information given by what books people ask for, not by the prices they pay. But the whole problem was posed 100 years ago, and we live in a very different world now. The assumptions need to be reevaluated. What was true for the industrializing Soviet Union is not necessarily true of a world with near-instantaneous means of conveying giant quantities of information across the world. Technology and material abundance might actually massively alter the feasibility of non-market means of producing and distributing goods and services. Even at the time, capitalist economist Joseph Schumpeter said Mises was flat wrong to say planned, non-market economies “could not” work, and Schumpeter concluded that “there is nothing wrong with the pure logic of socialism.” (Schumpeter used socialism to mean central planning, which is a bad definition, but nonetheless the point remains that even this free market economist thought the free marketers’ critique was unsound.) In a society of abundance, or at least a society where individuals’ desires can all in principle be satisfied because there is more than enough to go around, it may be possible to operate without prices, or to have prices operating silently in the background for the benefit of planners but never seen by individuals, who do not have to think about money. (A technical treatment of the implications of today’s “Big Data” for the “calculation debate” can be found in a long article by Evgeny Morozov for the Monthly Review .)

  Now, of course, Pleasant Acres was a very limited kind of place. It did not have to allocate giant amounts of industrial capital, it did not have to invent new products. All of that was “imported.” I am not here commenting on the need for money and exchange relationships within the wider economy. I do not know how large are the domains that can be sealed off from the market without negative consequences. What I am asking us to do is think about how we now live in a very different world from the one of a hundred years ago, and Karl Marx may have been completely correct that capitalism is actually creating the conditions that make socialism more and more possible. We know that decommodification is possible, because it has happened and worked well. What we do not know, and what can be found out only through experimentation, is just how far it can go. Perhaps our imaginary retirement village, with its 20-hour work week, Universal Basic Income, vibrant social life, and free-at-point-of-use access to all of life’s essentials, is not so far from the realm of the possible as we are told. 

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How to Live Without Money

Last Updated: March 27, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was reviewed by Alex Kwan . Alex Kwan is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and the CEO of Flex Tax and Consulting Group in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has also served as a Vice President for one of the top five Private Equity Firms. With over a decade of experience practicing public accounting, he specializes in client-centered accounting and consulting, R&D tax services, and the small business sector. There are 13 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 708,999 times.

Living without money runs counter to most of our cultural understandings of success and happiness; however, it is a choice that more and more people are leaning towards. In addition to a decrease in stress over financial concerns, living without money offers many possible benefits such as reducing your environmental impact, increasing your understanding and appreciation of what you have, and helping you live a more purposeful life. Even if you decide that you cannot live entirely without spending money, these techniques will help you reduce wastefulness in your life.

Making Your Plans

• If you live in an area where walking or biking to work is feasible, you could avoid your commute and its expenses (gas, tolls, parking, car maintenance) by choosing self-powered transportation. Plus, it’s great for boosting fitness!
• Try going for a week without buying any groceries. Use only the foods you currently have in your pantry and fridge to make meals. Many websites are available to help you create meals from ingredients you already have on hand. [1] X Research source
• If you enjoy going out for entertainment, find free entertainment in your area. Your local newspaper’s website will usually have listings of free activities and events. In addition to books and free internet, public libraries often have movies you can check out for free. Going for a walk or spending the evening playing games with friends or family is always free.
• www.moneyless.org is an online database of useful tips and tricks for pursuing a cash-free existence.

• For example, if you or a family member tend to require frequent medical care or prescription medications, living without money may not be a good option for you.
• If you live in an extreme climate, such as a place that is very hot or very cold, it may not be safe to live without some temperature control. This is especially true if your family includes small children or elderly persons, who are more prone to heat- and cold-related illnesses and fatalities. [2] X Trustworthy Source United States Environmental Protection Agency Independent U.S. government agency responsible for promoting safe environmental practices Go to source

• The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living by Mark Boyle is a first-person account of living without money. He has also written blogs, a book called The Moneyless Manifesto'," and established a low-cost living website called Streetbank.
• The Man Who Quit Money by Mark Sundeen is a biography of Daniel Suelo, a man who has lived without money for over 14 years.
• The 2012 documentary film, Living Without Money , documents the life of Heidemarie Schwermer, a German woman who has been living without cash since the 1990s.

• If you live in an urban area and/or don’t own your home, your options for some of these things may be reduced. You should do some research to understand what is feasible for you.

• If you decide to keep a job, you will need to continue to pay taxes.

Arranging Accommodation

• Campervans (sometimes called caravans or recreational vehicles) may be a good option if you cannot afford a full-size family home with these amenities. It is also easier to find a site near water with a mobile home.
• “Earthships” are eco-friendly, inexpensive dwellings that use waste products like old car tires and beer bottles as construction materials. You can often find these materials for free or very cheaply, and you can often barter for labor help. [4] X Research source
• Even if you don’t choose to move house or live entirely without money, things such as solar power panels and composting toilets are friendly to both budgets and the environment.

• If you choose to volunteer in a foreign country, you will have to pay for a work visa. In addition, you will need enough money to cover your travel expenses.
• Volunteering on an organic farm can also be an excellent way to learn farming skills, which you can then use to grow your own food.

• You will probably want to contact a potential community and visit before you commit to living there. Communal living isn’t for everyone, and you’ll want to make sure your potential home and your personality and values are a good match.

• You can also check out organizations such as Couchsurfing or The Hospitality Club if you are looking for temporary housing, your plans are very flexible, and you are interested in meeting new people.

• Understand that this type of lifestyle is strenuous and requires excellent health and fitness. It is unlikely to be a good option if you are not in good health, or if you have children or elderly persons in your family.
• Move to a warmer climate. Living outside is much easier without vast fluctuations in temperatures, heavy rainfall, or frigid temperatures.

• If your values and faith make this experience a good match for you, you can research your options online or by contacting someone within the community you wish to join.
• Religious communities usually only accept individuals. If you have a family, this is unlikely to be a good option for you.

Finding and Growing Food

• If you have a university or college in your area, see if it has a cooperative extension. These offices provide education for the community on many things, including food cultivation and foraging, and often it is free to attend classes or get information.
• Remember that foods grow seasonally. Berries tend to be ready to be picked in the summer, while apples and nuts are harvestable in the autumn. Greens are often harvestable year-round. Whether you forage or grow your own crops, ensuring that you have foods to harvest year-round will help you keep a nutritionally balanced diet.

• Avoid collecting any nuts or plants which show signs of being partially eaten by another animal, have been broken open in a fall from a tree, or seem partially rotten, as these are likely to contain dangerous bacterial growth.
• Avoid picking greens and other plants near busy roads, or industrial sites, where runoff from the cars or pollution from industry may have contaminated your food source. Instead, look for food in rural, less developed areas, away from the impact of cars, industry, and technology.
• Never eat anything you cannot identify. If you’re unsure whether something is hazardous, it’s best to bypass it.

• Be cautious of meat, dairy, and eggs, as the risk of bacterial growth and foodborne illness is higher.
• Independent and family-owned stores may be more accommodating than mega chain stores, although stores such as Trader Joe’s are well-known for giving discarded food away.
• Make a name for yourself in your neighborhood. Most households waste thousands of dollars in uneaten food a year. Consider putting up a flyer in your local community center about yourself and your cash-free aspirations. Many people may be happy to donate slightly off fruits, vegetables, or older dried goods.

• Look at what you have to trade. Do you grow vegetables that your neighbors don't? Do you have skills that people around you need? Consider using your homegrown potatoes and handpicked berries, your fence-painting or babysitting skills, and your dog-walking experience to trade for fruits that you cannot grow or pick on your own,
• Remember: In a successful negotiation, both parties win. Be fair in your request. Is an hour of babysitting really worth ten pounds of fresh apples? Or is it more worth five?

• Decide what is most feasible to grow in your area. The easiest way to determine which plants thrive in your region is to visit a local farm or to speak with someone who tends an extensive food garden. Differences in regional climate and soil greatly affect which vegetables and fruits thrive in which areas.
• Build a greenhouse! Using recycled garbage bags over a wood frame, you can grow hardy vegetables, such as potatoes, Brussel sprouts, and radishes, in colder climates, even when there is snow on the ground.
• Ask your neighbors if any are interested in co-opting a garden space. Sharing the labor and time necessary to grow your own food, in exchange for a larger space of land, and a greater variety of fruits and vegetables is a wonderful way to diversify your diet, decrease your workload, and build community friendships.

Supplying Other Needs

• Look for items you want to get rid of. One's man trash is another man's treasure, so instead of selling your old shoes or watch on eBay, or throwing them away, try using them in exchange for items or services that you need.
• Remember that you can also barter for services. If your home needs repairs, see if you can exchange some time or skills of your own in exchange for the repair.

• Many stores and restaurants throw away food. Anything that contains meat, dairy, shellfish, or eggs should not be scavenged. Avoid anything that smells rotten or odd. Foods such as bread, canned goods, and packaged products like chips can usually be eaten safely, but make sure they are wrapped and not dented, torn, or bulging. [8] X Trustworthy Source Science Direct Online archive of peer-reviewed research on scientific, technical and medical topics Go to source
• Be aware that dumpsters may pose hazards such as broken glass, rats, and even biological waste. If you choose to rummage through a dumpster, come prepared: items such as rubber boots, gloves, and flashlights can help you dive safely. [9] X Trustworthy Source Science Direct Online archive of peer-reviewed research on scientific, technical and medical topics Go to source
• Do not dumpster dive in any area that is marked as “No Trespassing” or similar. It may be illegal and is certainly not worth the hassle of being stopped or even arrested.

• This is a great way to get rid of things like baby clothes that children have outgrown or toys they no longer play with. You can also swap books you’ve already read for new-to-you books, or get rid of extra linens and towels in exchange for things you need more of.

• Repair holes, tears, rips, and worn spots. Keep any spare pieces of fabric from unwearable items to use as a patch when needed.

Planning Transportation

• Check in your area for carpool incentives and communities. If you absolutely must keep a car, some cities offer financial incentives if you carpool with others. You may also be able to ride to work with other people who will help pay for your gas and car upkeep.

• Websites such as Liftshare, Ridester, and Carpool World can also help you find carpooling and ride share options in your community.
• Hitchhiking can be an option if you need to travel long distances, but exercise caution! Hitchhiking can be dangerous, particularly if you travel alone. [12] X Research source https:www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/hitchhiking-and-its-dangers

• Attach a basket to the front and back of the bicycle to help carry food and other items.

• Prepare emergency backup plans for walks in colder weather. A light snowstorm can quickly turn into a blizzard, and if you are walking several miles from your home, this can become an emergency situation. Consider going with a friend, or making sure someone knows where you will be and what time to expect you back.

Expert Q&A

• Start slow. It is highly unlikely that someone paying rent, buying clothes, driving a car, and working a standard 9-5 job can transition to a cash-free existence within a short period of time. Begin by focusing emotional fulfillment and entertainment on things that don't require money-spend times with friends outside instead of in restaurants, go walking instead of shopping, etc. Thanks Helpful 2 Not Helpful 0
• Move to a warmer climate. Farming, gardening, living outdoors, and living in a simple, handmade shelter is more easily done in places where the weather is consistently moderate. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
• Live with like-minded people. Moving to a cashless economy is much easier when done in a group, where work can be shared, skill sets can be combined, and obstacles can be addressed through group problem solving. Whether your move to a co-op, or simply develop a group of friends who have similar interests and ambitions, being able to share your experiences as a cashless consumer will be emotionally satisfying, and practically beneficial. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 1

• Regularly assess your nutritional intake, to make sure that you are eating a balanced diet and maintaining good health. Thanks Helpful 30 Not Helpful 5
• Be careful. Hitchhiking, living in the wilderness, and lengthy walks alone all carry potential hazards. Educate yourself on the best ways to stay safe. Thanks Helpful 33 Not Helpful 15
• If you live with small children or elderly people, remember that they are more vulnerable to foodborne illnesses, extreme temperatures, and exhaustion from physical exertion. Do not place them in unsafe situations. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 1

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://consumer.gov/managing-your-money/making-budget
• ↑ https://www.epa.gov/climate-change
• ↑ https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/raising-ambition/renewable-energy
• ↑ https://www.lowcarbon.co.uk/earthship-brighton/earthships
• ↑ https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/overview/model-for-community-change-and-improvement/lessons-learned/main
• ↑ https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/gst-excise-and-indirect-taxes/gst/in-detail/rules-for-specific-transactions/barter-and-trade-exchanges
• ↑ https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/dumpster-diving
• ↑ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0362028X22000035
• ↑ https://www.treepeople.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ge-community-swap-guide-2021.pdf
• ↑ https://pw.lacounty.gov/epd/ge/documents/ProjectResources/GE%20Swap%20Guide.pdf
• ↑ https:www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/hitchhiking-and-its-dangers
• ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/minding-the-body/201505/bicycling-can-sharpen-your-thinking-and-improve-your-mood
• ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470658/

About This Article

If you want to live without money, you can try exchanging your time or energy in order to receive basic lodging and food. Reach out to a local organic farm and see if you can volunteer there, or try joining a religious community like the Buddhist Sanghas or a Christian monastery. If you want to be self-reliant while living without money, learn to find wild food, grow your own crops, or try living in the wilderness. Try reducing your spending or living money-free for a week to see if this is the right choice for you. For more advice on how to grow food and barter goods, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Moral Markets?

Towards an economy of human flourishing, your portal to critical reflections on free markets, capitalism, business & economics.

Life Without Money; Building Fair and Sustainable Economies (2011)

Edited by anitra nelson and frans timmerman.

The money-based global economy is failing. The credit crunch undermined capitalism's ability to ensure rising incomes and prosperity while market-led attempts to combat climate change are fought tooth and nail by business as environmental crises continue.

We urgently need to combat those who say 'there is no alternative' to the current system, but what would an alternative look like? The contributors to Life Without Money argue that it is time radical, non-market models were taken seriously. The book brings together diverse voices presenting strong arguments against our money-based system's ability to improve lives and prevent environmental disaster. Crucially, it provides a direct strategy for undercutting capitalism by refusing to deal in money, and offers money-free models of governance and collective sufficiency.

Life Without Money is written by high-profile activist scholars, including Harry Cleaver, Ariel Salleh and John O'Neill, making it an excellent text for political economy and environmental courses, as well as an inspiring manifesto for those who want to take action.

Video from the Book Launch

"Eleven chapters explore a range of interesting and important themes, loosely divided into critiques of capitalism and consumerism, and activism and experiments. Among the topics are non-market socialism, self management, the labour credit system of the Twin Oaks commune, the money-free economy of Spanish squatters, the elimination of work and wages, and the gift economy. There are helpful introductory and concluding chapters by the editors. Although all chapters are clear and easily understood by the non-specialist reader, the discussions are also likely to be valuable refreshers for professional students of political economy. The book’s central thesis is that a satisfactory society requires the scrapping of markets, the state and money. The emphasis on the third of these propositions is particularly distinctive and debatable. [...] My main doubts regarding the book are to do with whether the case given for the need to scrap all forms of money is convincing. [...] These comments indicate the valuable discussion issues that this book sets up."

"this book brings together a broad range of participants, all of whom are convinced that money is a central part of the problem for reorganizing society and some of whom are actively engaged in groups attempting to function without money as it is commonly used and understood. The editors, from Australia, have explicitly set out to present a set of views of a group of 'non-market socialists', who would dispense with money and its social relations, arguing that this is the only way to confront the crises generated by the unsustainable practices of present-day capitalism. A useful and enlightening feature of the book is the inclusion of short vignettes at the end of all but one of the chapters by well-known advocates for the construction of alternatives, beginning with excerpts from Thomas More’s Utopia at the beginning. [...] While there is a surfeit of books sprouting with proposals for building alternative societies, there are a precious few that purport to be informed by strands of Marxist theory. This collection of essays offers an insight into one (decidedly not monolithic) approach to this end. It is firmly grounded in the world of the 'advanced' capitalist world and draws on thinking and examples that are deliberately nonviolent and focused on small-scale change (with the possible exception of the Yugoslav case). Reading through this collection leads one to wonder about the prerequisites for confronting the deepening crises afflicting advanced capitalist countries today: after all, we are brought into contact with a broad spectrum of case studies of attempts to implement new solutions, examples that offer a glimmer of light for the participants while not touching the larger society of which they are a part. We learn nothing about the quality of the interactions that the participants experience in their regions,as citizens in their countries, or as activists in an increasingly oppressive world. But perhaps even more striking, nowhere in the book is there a mention of the rest of the world... the teeming millions who suffer from lack of sufficient or adequate drinking water and from extreme degrees of hunger and starvation. [...] These observations notwithstanding, this is a valuable collection of essays that will spark classroom discussions of the possibilities for implementing change without massive social movements. The analyses in this book about doing without money,however, might be usefully complemented by other texts that analyze the many attempts worldwide to create alternative currency systems as part of the effort of limit the inroads of the global market in local economies."

"As a contributing author in the Nelson and Timmerman edited collection Life without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Communities (2011), I find Barkin’s review of the book in need of qualification."

Table of Contents of Life without Money

• Use Value and Exchange Value (Anitra Nelson and Frans Timmerman)

Part I. Critiques of Capitalism and Communism

• Money v. Socialism (Anitra Nelson - Honorary Associate Professor of RMIT University, Australia)
• Work Refusal and Self-Organisation (Harry Cleaver - Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Texas, Austin)
• Money, Markets and Ecology (John O’Neill - Hallsworth Professor of Political Economy at the University of Manchester, England)
• The Value of a Synergistic Economy (Ariel Salleh - Researcher in Political Economy at the University of Sydney, Australia, and previously Associate Professor in Social Ecology at the University of Western Sydney)
• A Gift Economy (Terry Leahy - Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Newcastle, Australia)

Part II. Activism and Experiments

• Non-Market Socialism (Adam Buick - Member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and regular contributor to the Socialist Standard)
• Self-Management and Efficiency (Mihailo Markovi - Widely published Serbian philosopher and scholar, worked for many years in the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy)
• Labour Credit – Twin Oaks Community (Kat Kinkade with the Twin Oaks Community - Founding member of Twin Oaks Community, established in Virginia, USA in 1967, and co-founder of the East Wind and Acorn communities, and the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, which still exist today)
• The Money-Free Autonomy of Spanish Squatters (Claudio Cattaneo - Obtained his PhD at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and teaches ecological economics at Carlo Cattaneo University, Italy)
• Global Strategy: Contract and Converge, by Anitra Nelson and Frans Timmerman - Prominent socialist faction leader in the Australian Labor Party for decades and a political adviser to several members of parliament. Co-editor of Free Palestine published by the General Palestinian Delegation in Australia (1979–1990)

About Anita Nelson and Frans Timmerman

Anitra Nelson is Associate Professor in the Centre for Urban Research School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University, Australia. She is the author of Marx's Concept of Money: The God of Commodities (Routledge, 1999), and she co-edited Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies (Pluto, 2011), Housing for Degrowth (Routledge, 2018) and is the author of Small is Necessary (Pluto, 2018).

Frans Timmerman (1961-2011) was a socialist faction leader in the Australian Labor Party and political adviser to members of parliament. He edited Free Palestine (1979-1990), published by the General Palestinian Delegation in Australia and was the co-editor of Life Without Money (Pluto, 2011).

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Does More Money Really Make Us More Happy?

• Elizabeth Dunn
• Chris Courtney

A big paycheck won’t necessarily bring you joy

Although some studies show that wealthier people tend to be happier, prioritizing money over time can actually have the opposite effect.

• But even having just a little bit of extra cash in your savings account ($500), can increase your life satisfaction. So how can you keep more cash on hand?
• Ask yourself: What do I buy that isn’t essential for my survival? Is the expense genuinely contributing to my happiness? If the answer to the second question is no, try taking a break from those expenses.
• Other research shows there are specific ways to spend your money to promote happiness, such as spending on experiences, buying time, and investing in others.
• Spending choices that promote happiness are also dependent on individual personalities, and future research may provide more individualized advice to help you get the most happiness from your money.

Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend here .

How often have you willingly sacrificed your free time to make more money? You’re not alone. But new research suggests that prioritizing money over time may actually undermine our happiness.

• ED Elizabeth Dunn is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia and Chief Science Officer of Happy Money, a financial technology company with a mission to help borrowers become savers. She is also co-author of “ Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending ” with Dr. Michael Norton. Her TED2019 talk on money and happiness was selected as one of the top 10 talks of the year by TED.
• CC Chris Courtney is the VP of Science at Happy Money. He utilizes his background in cognitive neuroscience, human-computer interaction, and machine learning to drive personalization and engagement in products designed to empower people to take control of their financial lives. His team is focused on creating innovative ways to provide more inclusionary financial services, while building tools to promote financial and psychological well-being and success.

Partner Center

A life without money. A Field Guide.

Are you up for the challenge of living without spending money? Get to know life in a new way. Challenge yourself to come up with solutions for everyday things: where do I get my food from, how will I sleep and what is that what I can offer to others? What can I exchange, for example? But also: how does real giving work? Here are 10 tips to get rid of your money addiction and to live life without the pressure of money.

Reduce Your Needs

You don't need all that stuff. Most things you would normally buy are really impulse purchases and are not really needed. Take a look at it. Your first exercise: keep a list for a week or even a month: what do you buy and what did you really need?

At the same time, be critical of your consumption pattern. Where do you spend money on and why? Is it mainly food, drink, clothing, new electronics, nightlife? Have a look at why you spend money on certain things. What is behind it? Is it pure survival (e. g. food) or is to feel good about something.

Then again think about what you really need. And whether you can also replace buying these items or getting those services with other ways of getting those items that actually do not cost any money. Is your thing dancing, going out or yoga?

How to live without money?

The first thing we often think of is where can I sleep? Of course, you could choose to sleep in a tent somewhere in a park or forest or just in a sleeping bag, but if wild camping is not really your thing then there are also plenty of other possibilities.

For example, what about living in a house in exchange for jobs or cleaning up a house? There are people looking for a care-taker for their pets or house when they are on holidays. Often this can be free of charge. And there are even websites available where you can find these persons.

You also have the option to just have a rented property but to find someone else who wants to pay the rent for you. Or you could even live in a house that actually is bought but that the mortgage, if any, is paid in a different way, for example through a foundation that supports your moneyless efforts.

Finally, you could also build a house on wheels, or build a house made of natural material, or material that is thrown away. You then only depend on getting a piece of ground. Who knows what kind of solution you can come up with again.

Find food for free or grow your own food

Then we also have to eat. What are some of the possibilities?

• Grow food yourself. With a large vegetable garden you can come a long way. You can grow a lot of food that you can keep for the winter. You can also exchange food for something else.
• Go Dumpster Diving. You can find food in garbage bins on the market, supermarkets and shops.
• Eat for free. In some countries there are websites and networks where you can score free food.
• Ask for food. You can quite easily survive by asking people for food. But you must have a good story. You could think of asking for leftover food in shops that has to be thrown away. This is even possible in restaurants. You can also offer to exchange some work for food and build up a network. Imagine working in an organic shop one day a week in exchange of food.

Swap clothes or make your own

Making your own clothes isn't easy, but you can exchange clothes. In most cities people organize barter parties but you could also organize them yourself and invite others. You could find a community center that can host such a party for free.

If you are handy with a sewing machine, then you can also take in clothes that are too big. Or you can make new clothes from the parts of old garments. This may even become something you can use to exchange for other things.

Do work without pay

In order to get stuff you could also offer work without asking for a payment. Instead, ask for a quid pro quo. For example: offer free work at a vegetable shop in exchange for a bag with groceries. In many countries, you could also try this at a street market.

You can also offer some specific job. For example as a consultant, designer or whatever your profession might be. In return, you can ask your employee if they want to pay your rent for your home or office.

Travel without money

Traveling without money is very exciting. You depend on other people and not on money. You can walk, hitchhike or cycle. Or you can go out with a horse. Food you can ask on the go, this is even considered tradition in some countries. Also think of doing a pilgrimage, for example, or you can plan a journey for a good cause and get people to support you in advance.

We know out of our own experience that if you ask other persons for food and you actually have a good story, you will often get free food at restaurants or other shops. The most important thing is that you don't always expect to get food (you can oppose a rejection) and then you are also able to wait because from time to time you have little or nothing to eat.

There are also hospitality networks of fellow travelers where you can stay for free. But you can also sleep in a tent or hammock. Go somewhere where it's warmer and you can even sleep outside without a tent.

Go networking or search community

Without a network or community, anyone's life is difficult. If you have money then you can often buy what you want to have, but if you consciously want to live without any money at all, in many cases you are forced to be social. You simply can't do without other people!

It is essential to build a network of people who are able to help you. Offer people stuff, offer them work that you can do, or things you can make. Before you know it, you have a network of people and companies with which you can exchange or who otherwise can offer support.

Find sponsors

If you want to set up a project in which you can't get everything free of charge or via exchange, then look for sponsors. Sponsors can, for example, pay for the rental of a room, or help to get material.

You can also find a sponsor for other things, such as a sponsor who makes a piece of land available. Or a sponsor where you can live in the house. A sponsor can be another person, but also an institution, farmer or company.

Don't give up

You don't have to change your life overnight. Small steps is enough to stay on the road. Do it with patience but above all: do it creatively. For all tings that people usually use money, you have to think about how you will get it done without the money .

The more often you go through that process of creative thinking, the more resourceful you will become. That in itself is enough reason to do this experiment. If you continue from there and are able to let go of the moneys altogether.... then you will find it liberating to never have to put more money on the counter, to no longer have to see a cash register and no need to have a debit or credit card. Money is something of the past for you.

Read more about:

• Living without money
• Moneyless man
• Tips Living Without Money
• Moneyless society

Jo Nemeth, happy without money

Jo Nemeth lives without money to reduce her environmental impact. How much would you be able to do to reduce your environmental footprint? Jo Nemeth is an Australian who decided to live her life without money, possibly the most drastic way to worry less about money .

• Read more about Jo Nemeth, happy without money

Living Moneyless: Mark Boyle

Living without money, how does that work out in practice? The Irishman Mark Boyle has been doing it since November 2008 and he's having a great time. He's living in England in an old caravan given to him. He start symbolically on Buy Nothing Day, a yearly day to not buy anything together with others.

• Read more about Living Moneyless: Mark Boyle

Elf Pavlik - Moneyless since 2009

Elf Pavlik gave up money in 2009 after he had come back to Europe from San Francisco. In California he had been working for a highly competitive internet company that was mainly trying to compete with other companies, without really producing anything to make people happy.

• Read more about Elf Pavlik - Moneyless since 2009

Book: Steps Towards Inner Peace

The Peace-Pilgrim was a woman living almost 30 years without money, in the walhalla of money: the United States . She made many walking trips and took only little on those trips. She lived just from what people gave her and she never needed any money!

Her message was about an inner peace that is reachable by anyone. You as well! It's the ultimate form of happiness, always in peace with whatever is there. Always be at peace with yourself.

"Steps Towards Inner Peace" is the book published after her death. The book is available for free. You can order it at the website about the book and there is also a digital version in Dutch and other languages.

Also check Wikipedia for more information about her life and the website Peacepilgrim .

• Read more about Book: Steps Towards Inner Peace

Heidemarie Schwermer: A rich life without money

Living without money was the way to live in the past. Money is only a recent phenomenon. But since we live in a money economy it's a big challenge to live without money. Heidemarie Schwermer from Germany has done that for 20 years, since May 1996, until she passed away.

• Read more about Heidemarie Schwermer: A rich life without money

Raphael Fellmer

Some people have consciously chosen for a life without money . Raphael Fellmer and his family have been living without money or income since 2010, "to increase consciousness about responsibility, that we all carry for hunger, injustice and environmental damage." Raphael is living in Berlin with wife and children. He has been on TV several times.

• Read more about Raphael Fellmer

About Moneyless

On this website you can learn how to live without money. Living with no money is not easy and there are various ways to go about it. If it's a conscious choice it can be liberating. If it's because of poverty it can be very hard. How to survive without money. How to live a happy life without money? The answer is: live a simple life.

More Proof That Money Can Buy Happiness (or a Life with Less Stress)

When we wonder whether money can buy happiness, we may consider the luxuries it provides, like expensive dinners and lavish vacations. But cash is key in another important way: It helps people avoid many of the day-to-day hassles that cause stress, new research shows.

Money can provide calm and control, allowing us to buy our way out of unforeseen bumps in the road, whether it’s a small nuisance, like dodging a rainstorm by ordering up an Uber, or a bigger worry, like handling an unexpected hospital bill, says Harvard Business School professor Jon Jachimowicz.

“If we only focus on the happiness that money can bring, I think we are missing something,” says Jachimowicz, an assistant professor of business administration in the Organizational Behavior Unit at HBS. “We also need to think about all of the worries that it can free us from.”

The idea that money can reduce stress in everyday life and make people happier impacts not only the poor, but also more affluent Americans living at the edge of their means in a bumpy economy. Indeed, in 2019, one in every four Americans faced financial scarcity, according to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The findings are particularly important now, as inflation eats into the ability of many Americans to afford basic necessities like food and gas, and COVID-19 continues to disrupt the job market.

Buying less stress

The inspiration for researching how money alleviates hardships came from advice that Jachimowicz’s father gave him. After years of living as a struggling graduate student, Jachimowicz received his appointment at HBS and the financial stability that came with it.

“My father said to me, ‘You are going to have to learn how to spend money to fix problems.’” The idea stuck with Jachimowicz, causing him to think differently about even the everyday misfortunes that we all face.

To test the relationship between cash and life satisfaction, Jachimowicz and his colleagues from the University of Southern California, Groningen University, and Columbia Business School conducted a series of experiments, which are outlined in a forthcoming paper in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science , The Sharp Spikes of Poverty: Financial Scarcity Is Related to Higher Levels of Distress Intensity in Daily Life .

Higher income amounts to lower stress

In one study, 522 participants kept a diary for 30 days, tracking daily events and their emotional responses to them. Participants’ incomes in the previous year ranged from less than $10,000 to $150,000 or more. They found:

• Money reduces intense stress: There was no significant difference in how often the participants experienced distressing events—no matter their income, they recorded a similar number of daily frustrations. But those with higher incomes experienced less negative intensity from those events.
• More money brings greater control : Those with higher incomes felt they had more control over negative events and that control reduced their stress. People with ample incomes felt more agency to deal with whatever hassles may arise.
• Higher incomes lead to higher life satisfaction: People with higher incomes were generally more satisfied with their lives.

“It’s not that rich people don’t have problems,” Jachimowicz says, “but having money allows you to fix problems and resolve them more quickly.”

Why cash matters

In another study, researchers presented about 400 participants with daily dilemmas, like finding time to cook meals, getting around in an area with poor public transportation, or working from home among children in tight spaces. They then asked how participants would solve the problem, either using cash to resolve it, or asking friends and family for assistance. The results showed:

• People lean on family and friends regardless of income: Jachimowicz and his colleagues found that there was no difference in how often people suggested turning to friends and family for help—for example, by asking a friend for a ride or asking a family member to help with childcare or dinner.
• Cash is the answer for people with money: The higher a person’s income, however, the more likely they were to suggest money as a solution to a hassle, for example, by calling an Uber or ordering takeout.

While such results might be expected, Jachimowicz says, people may not consider the extent to which the daily hassles we all face create more stress for cash-strapped individuals—or the way a lack of cash may tax social relationships if people are always asking family and friends for help, rather than using their own money to solve a problem.

“The question is, when problems come your way, to what extent do you feel like you can deal with them, that you can walk through life and know everything is going to be OK,” Jachimowicz says.

Breaking the ‘shame spiral’

In another recent paper , Jachimowicz and colleagues found that people experiencing financial difficulties experience shame, which leads them to avoid dealing with their problems and often makes them worse. Such “shame spirals” stem from a perception that people are to blame for their own lack of money, rather than external environmental and societal factors, the research team says.

“We have normalized this idea that when you are poor, it’s your fault and so you should be ashamed of it,” Jachimowicz says. “At the same time, we’ve structured society in a way that makes it really hard on people who are poor.”

For example, Jachimowicz says, public transportation is often inaccessible and expensive, which affects people who can’t afford cars, and tardy policies at work often penalize people on the lowest end of the pay scale. Changing those deeply-engrained structures—and the way many of us think about financial difficulties—is crucial.

After all, society as a whole may feel the ripple effects of the financial hardships some people face, since financial strain is linked with lower job performance, problems with long-term decision-making, and difficulty with meaningful relationships, the research says. Ultimately, Jachimowicz hopes his work can prompt thinking about systemic change.

“People who are poor should feel like they have some control over their lives, too. Why is that a luxury we only afford to rich people?” Jachimowicz says. “We have to structure organizations and institutions to empower everyone.”

[Image: iStockphoto/mihtiander]

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One Frugal Girl

Earn, Save, and Live Joyfully.

Living Simply (A Simple Life With Less Money)

Two factors propelled my  race for financial independence : increasing my income and living simply. One helped me earn and save money. The other helped me realize I didn’t need nearly as much as I thought I did.

Living Simply Requires Less Money

How much money do you need to save for a simple life in retirement? How much do you need to live a simple, enjoyable life? Have you ever thought about it? If I asked you that question, what would you say, and how would you come up with the number?

Would you choose your current salary, look at your monthly mortgage payments or review your credit card bills?

Many years ago, I sat down to calculate my yearly expenses. I added up every purchase and generated a total that felt safe and secure. The number was huge!

I needed a giant pile of money to live my best life, so I spent my twenties and early thirties racing to reach that amount.

I was incredibly proud of my career, earning six figures and seeing my bank accounts grow. The more money I added to my accounts, the better I felt.

But then a funny thing happened. I reached  financial independence  and realized I needed a fraction of that amount.

Living a Simple Life with Little Money

When I calculated the perfect number, I used the wrong frame of reference. Instead of looking at my current expenses, I should’ve asked myself what I needed to  live a simple, happy, healthy, well-adjusted life .

Last year, we  bought a house , which  motivated me to clean and declutter . Each time I bagged up our stuff, I felt lighter and less stressed. As I purged our possessions, I felt their weight disappearing from my shoulders.

How much money had we  spent on unnecessary stuff ? How little did we need to live a simple, happy life?

Living Simply Without Obligations

I was a minimalist before the pandemic began, but as the days turned into weeks, months, and years, I realized that the rules of living simply shouldn’t be confined to our possessions.

I began to focus on the simplicity of our time, obligations, and schedules.

To live simply, I needed to figure out what I valued most in life. As you can imagine, the most valuable connections in life have nothing to do with money.

During the pandemic, our schedules widened. The obligations of everyday life dissolved, and I relished in the  time freedom  that allowed us to stop rushing from one place to another.

As we removed commitments, I let go of my expectations. With time apart, I also distanced myself from the  drama of extended family members .

I didn’t need money to buy anything other than necessities. Plane tickets, hotel rooms, and amusement parks dropped off the list. If we wanted to entertain ourselves, we grabbed board games and played together.

We enjoyed stepping into nature and relishing in the warm sunshine. Of course, none of our daily activities required money. When the world grew quiet, our expenses dropped dramatically. When we stripped down life to the basics, I realized I didn’t need that much.

In the quiet time, my creative juices flowed. Without overwhelming responsibilities, my mind cleared, and my thoughts came into focus.

Keeping Life Simple

For the first time in a long time, we didn’t need to plan our days. We could lounge around the house in pajama pants, reading, and coloring.

It felt incredible to seize the day without a plan. We played basketball, went to the beach, and took long walks and bike rides.

We put the to-do list aside and appreciated resting our minds and bodies. As a result, our relationships and connections strengthened.

How Much Money Do I Need to Live a Simple Life?

In my youth, I didn’t understand that I was trading my energy for money. Back then, time seemed infinite , and I had plenty to spare.

So I worked hard and built a solid nest egg. I don’t regret that fact . It’s helped calm my financial anxieties and pays for my chronic health issues, but maybe I didn’t need to push so hard or save so much.

What I need isn’t more money. It’s fewer possessions, more mental space, and fewer time constraints.

Now, I feel a pressing need to make the  most of my time . I’m willing to live in a smaller house with fewer obligations and less stuff to do that.

It’s not about deprivation or frugal living . It’s about realizing that I don’t need much to feel content and happy.

What about you? Are you focusing on money, living simply, or both?

2 thoughts on “Living Simply (A Simple Life With Less Money)”

Options C: all of the above!

I’m trying to focus on money but not at the expense of my health. It’s all fun and games until someone gets burnout.

Spot on! Balance is the key to a joyful life!

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Essays About Money: Top 5 Examples and 6 Prompts

With money comes great power; however, power must always come with responsibility. Discover thought-provoking essays about money in our guide.

Money is everywhere. We use it to eat, drink, clothe ourselves, and get shelter, among many other uses. Nowadays, it is an undisputed fact that “money makes the world go round.” The earliest known form of money dates back to around 5,000 years ago ; trade was previously carried out using a barter system. However, over the centuries, more and more nations began implementing a currency system, and money has become more critical. 

In the contemporary world, it seems to be “all about money.” However, it is important not to lose sight of what is important; we must maintain good physical and mental health and healthy relationships with the people around us. Money is necessary; it is just not the only thing necessary. To start your essay, read these examples to write insightful essays about money. 

5 Top Examples On Essay About Money

1. essay on money by prasanna, 2. how money changed human history by jacob wilkins, 3. capitalism: money that make money by ernestine montgomery, 4.  is money the most important thing by seth higgins.

• 5. ​​An Introduction to Saving Money by Jeremy Vohwinkle

Writing Prompts For Essays About Money

1. good uses for money, 2. the “dark side” of money, 3. money’s role in history, 4. morality vs. money, 5. can money buy happiness, 6. how to save money.

“Imagine the world without money. We will eventually come to a point where we will be asking questions like “what’s the point of life”. Hope and goals are some of the important things that will keep a man going in life. Without any sense of achievement or motivation, there wouldn’t be any inventions or progress in the world. People work to get money and then people work harder to get more money. This cycle of life that keeps a man motivated and hopeful is one of the biggest advantages of the system of money”

This essay gives readers a general outlook on money and its advantages and disadvantages. It gives people equal opportunity to work for their dreams and motivates them to be productive members of society, while it also raises the question of greed. Money, without a doubt, has its positive and negative aspects, but it exists and is only becoming more critical.

“But the barter economy was flawed. There was no universal measure for determining the value of an item. It was all based on the subjective opinion of the individuals involved. And to make matters worse, the barter economy relied on both sides wanting something the other had to offer. Trade, therefore, could be sluggish and frustrating. Human beings needed something different, and money was the answer.”

Wilkins writes about how money revolutionized the way trade was conducted. The barter system involved trading any objects if both parties agreed to a deal, such as trading animal skins for fish or medicine for timber. However, the only measure of an item’s value was how much one party wanted it- both sides needed to have something the other wanted. The introduction of money allowed people to put a solid value on commodities, making trade easier.  

“So, if you were to closely observe the dirty, disordered canvas of economic progress during the 20th and 21 st century, you should conclude that, for all its warts, capitalism has been the winner. It has sometimes caused pain; suffered from serious cycles; and often needed the clout of the state- such as we have seen from September 2008. It has also been quite resistant to sensible regulation. Even so, the basic institutions of capitalism have worked, not just in the US and the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and development) nations, but also many developing countries, of which India is one.”

Albeit lengthy, Montgomery’s essay discusses the debate between socialism and capitalism, a topic of which money is at the core. Montgomery describes Karl Marx’s criticism of capitalism: all the money goes to a few people, not the workers. She believes these are valid to an extent and criticizes certain forms of capitalism and socialism. Neither capitalism nor socialism is perfect, but according to Montgomery, capitalism creates a better economy. 

“Being the richest man in the world does not mean you are the happiest man in the world, although money can buy you happiness sometimes, but not always. If we could all appreciate the way life is, the fun, and the beauty I think the world would be better. If people weren’t power hungry maybe we’d have a lesser demand for money. Those people who is money hungry and power hungry need to relax. Money can’t buy you happiness. These individuals need to understand that.”

Higgins implores readers to remember that money is not the only thing people need in the world. He stresses the necessity of money, as it is used to pay for various necessary goods and services; however, he believes it is not a prerequisite for happiness. Material things are temporary, and there are other things we should focus on, like family and friends. 

5. ​​ An Introduction to Saving Money by Jeremy Vohwinkle

“A financial emergency may take the form of a job loss, significant medical or dental expense, unexpected home or auto repairs, a hurricane or major storm, or something unthinkable, such as a global pandemic. The last thing you want to do is to rely on credit cards with their hefty interest fees or to be forced to take out a loan. That’s where your emergency fund can come in handy. Historically, the formula for an emergency account is to have enough readily available cash to cover three to six months of living expenses.“

Vohwinkle’s essay gives readers some suggestions on how to save more money. Most importantly, he suggests setting up an emergency fund, as all other saving techniques stem from there. He also suggests creating an automatic savings plan and cutting down on “spending leaks,” like buying coffee. You might also be interested in these essays about celebration .

In this essay, write about why money is necessary and the ways to use it for the greater good, and include ways in which it can be used (investing, donating, etc.). For each point, you make, be sure to explain why. Of course, this is entirely subjective; feel free to write about what you consider “good uses” for money. 

On the other hand, money also has a negative side —research on money-related issues, such as taxpayer-funded corruption and trading of illegal goods. In your essay, explore this side of money and perhaps give solutions on how to stop these problems. 

Money has played a progressively more important role throughout human history. Discuss the development of currency and the economy, from the barter system to the digital world we live in today. You need not go too in-depth, as there is a lot of ground to cover and many eras to research. Be sure to cite reputable sources when discussing history. 

Many people warn of “selling your soul” for financial gain. In your essay, you can write about the importance of having solid values in this day and age, where money reigns supreme. What principles do you need to keep in mind? Explain how you can still value money while staying grounded; mention the balance between material needs and others. 

As stated in Higgins’ essay, more people have begun to prioritize money over all else. Do you believe that money is truly the most important thing? Can it alone make you happy? Discuss both sides of this question and choose your position accordingly. Be sure to provide precise supporting details for a stronger argument. 

Enumerate tips on how you can save money. Anything works, from saving certain things for special occasions to buying more food in the grocery rather than eating out. This is your opinion; however, feel free to consult online sources and the people around you for extra advice. 

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers .If you’re still stuck, check out our general resource of essay writing topics .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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Can Money Really Buy Happiness?

Money and happiness are related—but not in the way you think..

Updated November 10, 2023 | Reviewed by Chloe Williams

• More money is linked to increased happiness, some research shows.
• People who won the lottery have greater life satisfaction, even years later.
• Wealth is not associated with happiness globally; non-material things are more likely to predict wellbeing.
• Money, in and of itself, cannot buy happiness, but it can provide a means to the things we value in life.

Money is a big part of our lives, our identities, and perhaps our well-being. Sometimes, it can feel like your happiness hinges on how much cash is in your bank account. Have you ever thought to yourself, “If only I could increase my salary by 12 percent, I’d feel better”? How about, “I wish I had an inheritance. How easier life would be!” I don’t blame you — I’ve had the same thoughts many times.

But what does psychological research say about the age-old question: Can money really buy happiness? Let’s take a brutally honest exploration of how money and happiness are (and aren’t) related. (Spoiler alert: I’ve got bad news, good news, and lots of caveats.)

Higher earners are generally happier

Over 10 years ago, a study based on Gallup Poll data on 1,000 people made a big headline in the news. It found that people with higher incomes report being happier... but only up to an annual income of $75,000 (equivalent to about $90,000 today). After this point, a high emotional well-being wasn’t directly correlated to more money. This seemed to show that once a persons’ basic (and some “advanced”) needs are comfortably met, more money isn’t necessary for well-being.

But a new 2021 study of over one million participants found that there’s no such thing as an inflection point where more money doesn’t equal more happiness, at least not up to an annual salary of $500,000. In this study, participants’ well-being was measured in more detail. Instead of being asked to remember how well they felt in the past week, month, or year, they were asked how they felt right now in the moment. And based on this real-time assessment, very high earners were feeling great.

Similarly, a Swedish study on lottery winners found that even after years, people who won the lottery had greater life satisfaction, mental health, and were more prepared to face misfortune like divorce , illness, and being alone than regular folks who didn’t win the lottery. It’s almost as if having a pile of money made those things less difficult to cope with for the winners.

Evaluative vs. experienced well-being

At this point, it's important to suss out what researchers actually mean by "happiness." There are two major types of well-being psychologists measure: evaluative and experienced. Evaluative well-being refers to your answer to, “How do you think your life is going?” It’s what you think about your life. Experienced well-being, however, is your answer to, “What emotions are you feeling from day to day, and in what proportions?” It is your actual experience of positive and negative emotions.

In both of these studies — the one that found the happiness curve to flatten after $75,000 and the one that didn't — the researchers were focusing on experienced well-being. That means there's a disagreement in the research about whether day-to-day experiences of positive emotions really increase with higher and higher incomes, without limit. Which study is more accurate? Well, the 2021 study surveyed many more people, so it has the advantage of being more representative. However, there is a big caveat...

Material wealth is not associated with happiness everywhere in the world

If you’re not a very high earner, you may be feeling a bit irritated right now. How unfair that the rest of us can’t even comfort ourselves with the idea that millionaires must be sad in their giant mansions!

But not so fast.

Yes, in the large million-person study, experienced well-being (aka, happiness) did continually increase with higher income. But this study only included people in the United States. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that our culture is quite materialistic, more so than other countries, and income level plays a huge role in our lifestyle.

Another study of Mayan people in a poor, rural region of Yucatan, Mexico, did not find the level of wealth to be related to happiness, which the participants had high levels of overall. Separately, a Gallup World Poll study of people from many countries and cultures also found that, although higher income was associated with higher life evaluation, it was non-material things that predicted experienced well-being (e.g., learning, autonomy, respect, social support).

Earned wealth generates more happiness than inherited wealth

More good news: For those of us with really big dreams of “making it” and striking it rich through talent and hard work, know that the actual process of reaching your dream will not only bring you cash but also happiness. A study of ultra-rich millionaires (net worth of at least $8,000,000) found that those who earned their wealth through work and effort got more of a happiness boost from their money than those who inherited it. So keep dreaming big and reaching for your entrepreneurial goals … as long as you’re not sacrificing your actual well-being in the pursuit.

There are different types of happiness, and wealth is better for some than others

We’ve been talking about “happiness” as if it’s one big thing. But happiness actually has many different components and flavors. Think about all the positive emotions you’ve felt — can we break them down into more specifics? How about:

• Contentment
• Gratefulness

...and that's just a short list.

It turns out that wealth may be associated with some of these categories of “happiness,” specifically self-focused positive emotions such as pride and contentment, whereas less wealthy people have more other-focused positive emotions like love and compassion.

In fact, in the Swedish lottery winners study, people’s feelings about their social well-being (with friends, family, neighbors, and society) were no different between lottery winners and regular people.

Money is a means to the things we value, not happiness itself

One major difference between lottery winners and non-winners, it turns out, is that lottery winners have more spare time. This is the thing that really makes me envious , and I would hypothesize that this is the main reason why lottery winners are more satisfied with their life.

Consider this simply: If we had the financial security to spend time on things we enjoy and value, instead of feeling pressured to generate income all the time, why wouldn’t we be happier?

This is good news. It’s a reminder that money, in and of itself, cannot literally buy happiness. It can buy time and peace of mind. It can buy security and aesthetic experiences, and the ability to be generous to your family and friends. It makes room for other things that are important in life.

In fact, the researchers in that lottery winner study used statistical approaches to benchmark how much happiness winning $100,000 brings in the short-term (less than one year) and long-term (more than five years) compared to other major life events. For better or worse, getting married and having a baby each give a bigger short-term happiness boost than winning money, but in the long run, all three of these events have the same impact.

What does this mean? We make of our wealth and our life what we will. This is especially true for the vast majority of the world made up of people struggling to meet basic needs and to rise out of insecurity. We’ve learned that being rich can boost your life satisfaction and make it easier to have positive emotions, so it’s certainly worth your effort to set goals, work hard, and move towards financial health.

But getting rich is not the only way to be happy. You can still earn health, compassion, community, love, pride, connectedness, and so much more, even if you don’t have a lot of zeros in your bank account. After all, the original definition of “wealth” referred to a person’s holistic wellness in life, which means we all have the potential to be wealthy... in body, mind, and soul.

Kahneman, D., & Deaton, A.. High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. . Proceedings of the national academy of sciences. 2010.

Killingsworth, M. A. . Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year .. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2021.

Lindqvist, E., Östling, R., & Cesarini, D. . Long-run effects of lottery wealth on psychological well-being. . The Review of Economic Studies. 2020.

Guardiola, J., González‐Gómez, F., García‐Rubio, M. A., & Lendechy‐Grajales, Á.. Does higher income equal higher levels of happiness in every society? The case of the Mayan people. . International Journal of Social Welfare. 2013.

Diener, E., Ng, W., Harter, J., & Arora, R. . Wealth and happiness across the world: material prosperity predicts life evaluation, whereas psychosocial prosperity predicts positive feeling. . Journal of personality and social psychology. 2010.

Donnelly, G. E., Zheng, T., Haisley, E., & Norton, M. I.. The amount and source of millionaires’ wealth (moderately) predict their happiness . . Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2018.

Piff, P. K., & Moskowitz, J. P. . Wealth, poverty, and happiness: Social class is differentially associated with positive emotions.. Emotion. 2018.

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Life without Principle Essay

Introduction: the main themes of life without principle, main message of life without principle, thoreau’s life without principle: conclusion, works cited.

Life without Principle is one of the most remarkable short works by an American author and critic Henry David Thoreau. The essay was published in 1863, 15 years after the famous Civil Disobedience. In summary, Life without Principle and other Thoreau’s books influenced many people of different ages and social statuses. Political leaders found his works educative and used quotes from Life without Principle in their practice. Ordinary people, in their turn, found the message of the text very personal and compelling. That is why it was not a surprise that Thoreau’s essay was recognized as a work that offered a program to be taken by every righteous person. One can not reduce the summary of Life without Principle to one topic. It is rather a list of themes and thoughts illustrated by real-life examples. Through the latter, the character and personal experience of the writer are revealed.

Though it is hard to define one concrete thesis of Henry David Thoreau’s Life without Principle, the point that this thesis somehow connected to money and its power in the world is evident. “This world is a place of business” (Thoreau 4) is one of the leading phrases in Life without Principle that depicts a true nature of H.D.Thoreau’s ideas and attempts; this message of Life without Principle is considered to be the central fact that is proved throughout the whole text by means of examples, which fulfill our everyday life. In this essay, I make an analysis of Life without Principle.

Thoreau is the author who does not want to stop on one message and develop it during the whole paper. That is why what he chooses for his Life without Principles is compelling and captivating. He presents one major theme of Life without Principle, defining the world as the place of business and tries to prove the chosen position by a variety of examples.

He argues about the values and goals of people, who are eager to develop commerce and support the ideas of globalization without taking into consideration the fact that people themselves become victims of personal desires. He raises one of the most provocative analyzation questions that influence our lives considerably and tries to conclude whether all those costs, both financial and spiritual, are worthy of the profits.

The purpose of the essay is to show its reader the way of how money rules this world. From the very beginning, the author correctly defines his positions with respect to the reader and admits that he does not want to “talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home” as possible (Thoreau 2). Such concretization makes the reader believe that his purposes are pure and definite. He writes to help, open the reader’s eyes, and show how wrong or useless human attempts can be. This is the major theme of Life without Principle.

His purpose is to characterize the way how materialism and commercialism enslave American society, to show how the Good Life should look like, and to teach the reader to analyze personal attitude to lives, where money and prosperity may lose their powers and impact on people. He wants to show how elusive human demands can be, admitting that “the ways by which you may get the money almost without exception lead downward” (Henry David Thoreau, Life without Principle, 8).

The target audience of the essay cannot be framed. One of the most peculiar features of Life without Principle is that there is no concretization concerning who is intended to be the reader of this essay.

It may be an unfortunate debtor who “goes to church to take account of stock” or men, who are “so well employed,” or a “gold-digger” with his passion for gambling, etc. (Thoreau 13, 10, 19). In other words, this essay may become somewhat helpful for those who somehow deal with money, and these are all people in the world. The author admits that people become dependent on money unintentionally. The writer “cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in” because everything is “ruled for dollars and cents” (Henry David Thoreau 4).

Maybe, it is safe and more effective not to define the target audience at once and provide every reader with a chance to discover whether this source is exciting and helpful for him/her. The uniqueness of this essay is the author’s impartiality to the reader and unbelievable focus on the topic.

The purpose of the essay is achieved through a close connection to the reader’s demands. After reading this essay, a powerful desire to re-evaluate personal life and place in this world appears. In my opinion, this is the desired effect expected from the paper.

When the reader accepts the author’s point of view and finds that these ideas are appropriate for this life, the primary purpose of any essay is achieved. In Life without Principle, Thoreau’s goal is to show how considerable and influential the power of money can be, and how people limit their opportunities.

One debtor may read this essay and comprehends that his troubles and his challenges mean nothing in comparison to his spiritual life and his attitude to life. This is why it is possible to say that the author’s choice to use real-life examples and personal experience in this work is wholly justified. Even more, it becomes an effective means to achieve the essential purpose and convict the reader.

The effectiveness of the essay lies deep into the author’s demands. I genuinely believe that one of the first steps that need to be taken by any author is to believe in personal ideas and thoughts. The chosen argument is perfectly argued because the author uses as many different things as possible to show when his ideas are likely to rely upon. He not only teaches the reader but also explains why these lessons are essential. His powerful examples that are so close to our everyday routines cannot but impress the reader.

“If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer, but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.” (Thoreau 6). This citation would probably be the best summary of Life without Principle.

This paper aimed to make an analysis of Life without Principle by Henry David Thoreau. This is one of the great writings offered by the author. The essay reviews the main idea of Life without Principle. Quotes and excerpts from the text are used as illustrations.The messages of the work by Thoreau are touching and educative, helpful and frustrating, amazing, and sometimes evident. Due to such doubtful nature, many readers can find the book interesting under their demands.

Everyone knows that he/she lives in a world that is too dependable on money because each citizen is a voluntary participant in this pursuit for profit. The effectiveness of the essay under discussion lies in its connection to everyday problems and human desires: people want to become smart and prudent in their activities, but their attention and passion make them so blind and stupid, and, what is more frustrating, dependent on their product, money.

Thoreau, Henry, D. Life without Principle . 2010. Web.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, October 28). Life without Principle. https://ivypanda.com/essays/life-without-principle-the-analysis-of-the-essay/

"Life without Principle." IvyPanda , 28 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/life-without-principle-the-analysis-of-the-essay/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Life without Principle'. 28 October.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Life without Principle." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/life-without-principle-the-analysis-of-the-essay/.

1. IvyPanda . "Life without Principle." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/life-without-principle-the-analysis-of-the-essay/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Life without Principle." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/life-without-principle-the-analysis-of-the-essay/.

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• Art as a Reflection of Reality in Thoreau’s Walden
• Thomas Jefferson and Henry David Thoreau
• King 's “Letter From Birmingham Jail” and Thoreau's “Civil Disobedience”
• Henry Thoreau: The Concept of the Friendship
• Henry David Thoreau: Modern Literary Canon
• Querencia and Thoreau, Thoreau’s “Walden”
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• Characters in The Glass Menagerie and Death of a Salesman
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Essay on Life Without Parents

Students are often asked to write an essay on Life Without Parents in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Life Without Parents

Introduction.

Parents are like a tree’s roots, giving us strength and stability. Without them, life can be hard. This essay will explore life without parents.

Emotional Impact

When parents are not present, children often feel alone and scared. They lack the love and comfort that parents provide. This can lead to feelings of sadness and loneliness.

Physical Needs

Parents provide food, shelter, and clothing. Without them, children may struggle to meet these basic needs. They may live in poor conditions and suffer from hunger.

Parents usually guide their children’s education. Without them, children may not get the support they need to do well in school. Their future can be affected.

Moral Guidance

Parents teach us right from wrong. Without them, children may not learn important values. This can affect their behavior and relationships.

Life without parents is challenging. Children need their love, support, and guidance to grow into healthy, happy adults. We should all appreciate our parents and the role they play in our lives.

250 Words Essay on Life Without Parents

Understanding the topic.

Life without parents is a situation no child should have to face. Parents are like a shelter, protecting us from life’s storms. They guide us, teach us, and support us. But what if this shelter is not there? What would life be like?

Without parents, life can feel empty and lonely. Parents are our first friends, our first teachers. They provide love, comfort, and security. Without them, a child might feel lost and alone. This loneliness can lead to sadness and even depression.

Learning and Growth

Parents are our first teachers. They teach us how to walk, talk, and behave. They help us understand the world. Without parents, a child might struggle to learn these basic things. They may also miss out on important lessons about values, morals, and responsibility.

Financial Stability

Parents provide for us. They work hard to make sure we have food, clothes, and a home. Without parents, a child might face financial difficulties. They may have to work at a young age, which can interfere with their education and future.

Support System

Parents are our biggest cheerleaders. They encourage us, believe in us, and help us achieve our dreams. Without parents, a child might lack this support. They may feel discouraged and give up on their dreams.

In conclusion, a life without parents is a tough journey. It’s filled with challenges and hardships. But with the right support and guidance, a child can overcome these obstacles and thrive. It’s crucial for society to step up and provide this support to children who are without parents.

500 Words Essay on Life Without Parents

Parents are like the sun that lights up our world. They guide us, protect us, and provide for our needs. But, what if we imagine a life without parents? It can be a scary thought, especially for young children who depend on their parents for everything.

Without parents, life can become very lonely. Parents are often our first friends. They are the ones we turn to when we are happy, sad, or scared. Without them, we may feel lost and alone. We may miss their love, guidance, and support. We may also feel scared and insecure, as we have no one to rely on.

Parents not only give emotional support but also provide for our physical needs. They work hard to earn money to buy food, clothes, and other things we need. They also take care of our health, taking us to the doctor when we are sick. Without parents, we may struggle to meet these basic needs.

Education and Future

Parents play a crucial role in our education and future. They help us with our homework, encourage us to study, and support our dreams. Without them, our education may suffer. We may also struggle to plan for our future, as we lack their guidance and support.

Learning Values

Parents teach us important values like honesty, kindness, and respect. They set an example for us to follow. Without parents, we may struggle to learn these values. We may also lack a role model to look up to.

In conclusion, life without parents can be very challenging. We may face many difficulties, from emotional loneliness to struggling with basic needs. We may also miss their guidance in our education and future. Despite these challenges, it’s important to remember that there are other people in our lives who can support us, like relatives, friends, and teachers. They can help fill the gap left by our parents. Still, the role of parents in our lives is unique and irreplaceable. They love us unconditionally and support us in every aspect of our lives. Life without them is unimaginable. Therefore, we should always appreciate and cherish our parents while we have them.

This essay is not meant to make you scared or sad. Instead, it’s a reminder of how important parents are in our lives. So, let’s take a moment to thank our parents for all they do for us. Let’s show them our love and gratitude every day. After all, parents are the biggest blessing in our lives.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Life Without Paper
• Essay on Life Without Mathematics
• Essay on Life Without Light

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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Money Essay

Money is the medium used by people to buy required goods and services. It is used as the source to fulfill basic needs and is also a source of comfort in life. Money is the most important source to live a healthy and prosperous life; however, it cannot be compared with the significance of love and care. Both have their own importance and benefits. Nevertheless, money is a useful and necessary commodity to live contentedly disposing all your usual liabilities towards your family and loved ones.

Long and Short Essay on Money in English

We have provided some simply written essay on money to help your kids to do better in their essay writing competition.

These Money Essay are written in easy English so that student of any class can easily understand it and also reiterate it or write it down, whenever required.

We have divided following essays under long and short essay on money in English according to the need, to help your kids to do better in their school competitions.

These essay on money will prove useful in your school assignments or general discussion with your family and friends.

Money Essay 1 (100 words)

Money is the most basic requirement of the life without which one cannot fulfill his basic needs and requirements of the daily routine. We can never compare the importance of the money with the importance of love or care. When one need money, love cannot fulfill this requirement and if one need love, money cannot fulfill this requirement.

Both are highly required for the healthy life but they have their significance and importance separately. Both are required by us on urgent basis so we cannot rank both on the same scale. We need money everywhere such as to eat food, to drink water or milk, to see TV, news, subscribe newspaper, wear clothe, get admission and many more requirements.

Money Essay 2 (150 words)

Money is the basic requirement of the life without which one cannot imagine a healthy and peaceful life. We need money even buying a little needle. In the modern time, where growth of civilization is going very fast and following western culture, we need more money because of the increasing prices of everything. Earlier there was a system called barter system in which one was allowed to exchange things to get goods however, in the modern one need only money to buy everything.

The importance of money is increasing day by day as the living has become so costly. The significance of money has increased to a great extent in the field of production, consumption, exchange, distribution, public finance and etc. It plays a very crucial role in determining the input, income, employment, output, general price level of anything, etc.

Money Essay 3 (200 words)

In such a costly and competitive society and world, no one of us can live without money. We need money to fulfil our basic needs of the life such as buying food, and other many basic necessities of life which are almost impossible to buy without money. People in the society who are rich and have property are looked as honourable and respectful person of the society however a poor person is seen as hatred without any good impression.

Money increases the position of the person in the society and gives good impression to him. All of us want to be rich by earning more money through good job or business in order to fulfil all the increasing demands of the modern age. However, only few people get this chance of completing their dreams of being a millionaire.

So, money is the thing of great importance all through the life. Money is required by everyone whether he/she is rich or poor ad living in urban areas or rural areas. People in the urban areas are earning more money than the people living in backward or rural areas as the people of the urban areas have more access to the technologies and get more opportunity because of the easy sources.

Money Essay 4 (250 words)

Money is very much required thing in the life however; it cannot buy things like time, love and true care. It can only fulfil the outer needs of the person and not the inner needs like true love. Now-a-days, everything has become so costly but necessary to buy for living a simple life. And what if we have no money, either we would die or suffer more if saved.

Money has capability to buy anything virtually and helps us a lot throughout the life. By taking the importance of the money in our life we should never destroy or waste the money without any purpose. We should not compare the money and love because both are required separately to run a successful life.

In this competitive world, everyone wants to get good study with higher education from the popular college and university to get good job in order to earn more money. A person needs more money to fulfil the requirement of the all members of the family especially one who is only working person of the family.

He or she needs to fulfil the eating, clothing and living requirements of the family members and for that money is required. Rich people of the society are given particular recognition and popularity however poor people live their life by arranging just food for two times a day. All the changes and differences are just because of the money.

Money Essay 5 (300 words)

Money is really a very important thing for the human beings to lead their life in the satisfactory way. Unlike animals and plants, we need more money everywhere. In order to live in the society, we need to maintain our status and position in the society for which we need money. In order to eat food or drink water, wear cloth, get admission to the school, take medicine or go to the hospital and other many activities we need lots of money. Now the topic arise is, where we got such required money. We need to get higher level study and do hard works to get good job or open our own business which requires more skill and confidence.

Earlier the condition of poor people was very poor because of the pressure of the rich people. They were not helping the poor people and use them only as a servant on the very low salary. However the condition of the poor people has become good as the rule and regulations of the government as been change in order to equalize the condition of both. Now everyone has equal rights to study higher and get good job. Many people understand that money is the origin of the evil in the mind however I do not think so because thinking is the process of human mind and not the creation of money.

I understand and believe that money is the most important key of happiness gifted by the God. It is the human mind to take anything in different ways. Some people take it only to fulfil their physical needs and they never take it heartily however some people understand everything to the money and they can do anything for getting the money such murder, corruption, underworld work, smuggling, promoting bribe, etc.

Money Essay 6 (400 words)

There is no any doubt that money is so essential for our healthy living. Money is almost everything for us to live a life and maintain the good stats in the society. It is the money which fulfils the need of bringing necessary comforts and amenities of the life. If one has money, he/she can get anything in his/her life. It is the money which helps us in developing good personality, improving confidence, makes us able to creditworthiness, improving capacity, increasing capabilities and enhancing our courage to a great level. Without money we feel helpless and alone in this world where no one is ready to help and assist. In the current materialistic world, money is very important and powerful thing without which one cannot live and survive.

Now-a-days, in order to earn more money in wrong ways, bad people are taking help of corruption, bribe, smuggling, murder rich people of the society, and other callous activities by degrading the moral and ethical values of the humanity. Lazy people follow wrong ways to earn money as they understand that these ways are simple and easy however it is not true. One can earn more money in less time and effort but not for long; surely he would be lost in the near future as he is following wrong and weak way. The people who are earning money by following all the rules of humanity earn less money but for long time and they become the high status personality of the society.

People doing corruption save their money as a black money in other countries to keep hidden from the common public and use that money for bad works or increasing their physical luxury. However, common people of the society respects a lot to the people earning money using wrong techniques as they have fear of them and little bit greediness that they can get some money in return whenever required by giving them respect. They are generally called as the bhai or dada or don. Money cannot buy or stay the time as well as cannot give true love and care however highly required by all of us to run the life on the right path. It cannot give time and love however gives happiness, confidence, satisfaction, feeling of well being mentally and physically, makes life easy by solving all the difficulties, and many more.

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All the money essay given above are written by the professional content writer to help students in getting fulfilled their needs and requirements. Essay on money is generally assigned to the students to write something in their own way. Money essay is given under the category of general essay. You can get other related essays and related information such as:

Essay on Poverty

Essay on Jan Dhan Yojana

Essay on Honesty is the Best Policy

Essay on Honesty

Essay on Corruption

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Americans stranded by Norwegian Cruise Line after island excursion, left without money, vital meds: report

Six American cruise passengers , including a pregnant woman, and two Australians were stranded on an African island during a vacation getaway, according to reports.

And it's only gotten worse.

A South Carolina couple – Jill and Jay Campbell – said Norwegian Cruise Line left the group on the island of São Tomé, a Central African island nearly 6,000 miles from their home, without their belongings, and allegedly refused to let them board, despite the Coast Guard's help.

They worked with the U.S. Embassy in Angola and planned to fly to the Gambia in West Africa to meet them at the next port, but the ship wasn't able to dock because of low tides, according to ABC 15 News, so the group remains in scramble mode.

NURSE HELPING AMERICANS IN ALLEGED BAHAMAS ATTACK WAS ‘SCARED’ BY WHAT SHE SAW: ‘COULD’VE BEEN MY DAUGHTERS

Norwegian Cruise Line didn't immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

The cruise line said in a statement to news outlets over the weekend that the passengers were left on the island "on their own or with a private tour" and missed the all-aboard time.

NORWEGIAN CRUISE LINES SECURITY GUARD ‘USED HIS SIZE AND STRENGTH’ AND ATTACKED PASSENGER: LAWSUIT

The Campbells, who live in Garden City, South Carolina, said they were eight days into a 21-day cruise and touring the beautiful tourist island when there was "an issue" and the tour guide "didn't get us back" to the cruise in time on Friday.

Despite their tardiness, the cruise was still anchored on the island when they returned and the island's Coast Guard took them on a boat to the ship, but the captain refused to let the group board, WRAL.com reported.

The U.S. couple said they're with some elderly passengers, including one passenger with a heart condition who's been without his medicine for five days, a paraplegic and a pregnant woman from Delaware, according to Fox Carolina.

"We were waiting for the tender boats to come back and get us because our boat was anchored off the harbor, but they didn’t come back to get us. So, we’re stranded here," Jay Campbell told Local 4 KSNB Hastings .

It seemed like the situation was going to be rectified by Sunday, but the cruise wasn't able to dock at the meetup point in the Gambia and now they're headed to a port in Senegal, where the cruise is scheduled to dock on Tuesday, ABC 15 reported.

EXCLUSIVE: MOM OF AMERICANS IN BAHAMAS SEX ATTACK REVEALS DAUGHTER'S HEART-STOPPING TEXT

They're going through the logistics of that headache.

"What we looked at was some type of van transportation for eight people, the quadriplegic woman included, driving from here," Jay Campbell told ABC 15 News. "We have to cross the ferry to get into Senegal.

"We just learned from the gentleman that the ferry hadn’t been working, but he said no problem, if the ferry is not working we will get another little boat and then pick up a car on the other side. And then once we get on the other side of Senegal, it’s another four-hour drive."

WATCH: TIPS FOR CRUISE VACATIONS

The cruise line responded to the accusations on Friday – before the latest docking issue in the Gambia – saying it's "a very unfortunate situation" in a statement to the local South Carolina Fox outlet.

"Guests are responsible for ensuring they return to the ship at the published time, which is communicated broadly over the ship’s intercom, in the daily communication and posted just before exiting the vessel," a spokesperson for the cruise line said.

WARNING FOR CRUISE PASSENGERS AS SEXUAL ASSAULTS HIT NEW HIGH IN 2023: FBI

But many of the passengers were separated from their belongings that are still in their cabins, including money, medicine, vaccination certifications required by immigration, among other important items, according to Fox Carolina.

"We have never had an experience like this before," Jill Campbell told WRAL News.

The cruise line released this statement to the media over the weekend.

"While this is a very unfortunate situation, guests are responsible for ensuring they return to the ship at the published time, which is communicated broadly over the ship’s intercom, in the daily communication and posted just before exiting the vessel.

"Guests are responsible for any necessary travel costs to rejoin the ship at the next available port of call. When the guests did not return to the vessel at the all-aboard time, their passports were delivered to the local port agents to retrieve when they returned to the port.

"Our team has been working closely with the local authorities to understand the requirements and necessary visas needed if the guests were to rejoin the ship at the next available port of call. We are in communication with the guests and providing additional information as it becomes available."

Original article source: Americans stranded by Norwegian Cruise Line after island excursion, left without money, vital meds: report

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