Articles | Living without money - penniless and prospering

Written by Mark Boyle | Posted on 10/09/2009 | Category: Living Together

Ten months ago Mark Boyle decided to take a big plunge by living completely without money on the outskirts of Bristol. Nearing the end of his one year project, and looking pretty good on it, we wonder how he’s coped and whether it’s been worth it.

Remind us why you’re doing it Mark?

After years of various types of activism – against war, environmental destruction, animal abuse, sweatshops – I realised that I was perpetually trying to fire-fight symptoms, without any thought for their root cause. When I investigated this further I found that most people have no idea that their everyday habits have such negative impacts because they have become so disconnected from what they consume. The degrees of separation between a consumer and what they consume have increased so much that people don’t see the embodied energy that goes into the stuff they buy, the waste, the environmental destruction or the suffering that happens along the way. I quickly realised that the enabler of this disconnection was money. If we had to take personal responsibility for producing the things we consume, then we would be massively less wasteful than we are today as we'd fully understand how much real energy went into making them.

Was there something that inspired you to give it a go?

Intellectualising the need to give up money, and actually living without it, are two hugely different challenges. In my last year of my economics degree in Ireland I came across the writings of Gandhi, and that changed the course of my life from one of accumulating as much wealth as I could to one trying to be of service as much as I could. You could say that his quote 'be the change you want to see in the world' inspired me to do it, as once I realised that we'll never have true sustainability until we move beyond money then I knew I had to do it myself first. I decided to attempt it for one year at the very least.

So what did you have to give up?

I had to give up everything really: pubs, cafes, flights back home to Ireland, listening to music, energy at the touch of a button, buses, trains. The only things that remained were things I could find ways of doing without money. It took a huge amount of planning - I had to break my life down to everything I consumed at the time and to then either decide that I was going to learn to do without it or else find an ecological way of doing it that involved no money.

How exactly have you done it?

I set about breaking down my life into every category imaginable, and began working out how I would meet my needs without currency. The list was huge, but on it there were a number of essentials. The first of these was obviously food.

The 'food for free table' has four legs. The first is growing your own, which I've been doing where I live. Then there is wild food foraging, my preferred option as it is nutritionally exceptional and without question the most gentle on the earth. The third leg – using waste food - is an incredible resource to draw on. Whilst I’m not comfortable with the fact that it's dependent on industrialised society to come into existence, I feel like I have an obligation to use this before using any more energy producing food. The last leg of the food table is barter, which involves using your skills or any excess food you've produced to meet any needs not met by the other methods.

With the next essential, accommodation, I got very lucky by getting a caravan from the excellent Freecycle, and parked it up on an organic farm that I volunteer on. If I am travelling I use projects such as Couch-Surfing, which is an online community of people who let you stay on their couch for free, anywhere in the world. I travel to faraway places by hitching and went from Bristol to North West Ireland for Christmas with no money. For anyone who is unsure about hitching, Liftshare is a great alternative. Anything under 150km I do either on foot or by bicycle, for which I have both a trailer and panniers to transport things around in. On top of that, I've got puncture proof tyres which means I have no more need for disposables such as tubes and puncture repair kits.

If I need something done that I cannot do myself, I use the Freeconomy Community to find willing skilled helpers, whilst getting the stuff I need to do it either from skips, tips, outside peoples houses or from Freecycle. With the Freeconomy Community, not only do I get the job done for free, I get to learn the skill I need in the process, borrow whatever tools I need to do the work and meet new like-minded friends locally!

For books and clothing, I organise book-swapping and clothes-swapping events. On top of this, there are fantastic organisations such as ReaditSwapit and Swishing online. There is so much stuff in the world and if we only learnt to share it we would only need to use a fraction of the worlds resources that we currently do.

I produce all my own energy – solar for my laptop and my incoming-calls-only mobile, a woodburner for heating and a rocket stove for cooking, which I fuel using old veg boxes and wood we coppice at the farm. When I first thought about cooking outdoors in the rain, wind and snow that inevitably comes with the British winter, I felt slightly overwhelmed. However, it quickly became one of the joys of my life; the wildlife became my TV and the birds became my ipod. Now I would rather have my time consumed cooking outdoors than kill it watching some 'reality' TV show in the 'living' room.

Whilst using my compost loo I use the discarded newspapers from the local newsagents -its not double quilted but it becomes normal surprisingly quickly! For me the compost toilet should be a symbol of this whole movement in the same way the spinning wheel became a symbol of Gandhi's India. It represents sanity and a respect for the earth and everything that lives on it.

What’s been the biggest challenge?

I think the hardest parts are the social element - it is hard to do as much stuff with friends as I used to and it can affect relationships. But also there’s the fact that everything just takes more time these days. Hand-washing my clothes in cold water, using sapindus mukkrossi (commonly known as soapnuts, native to Nepal but which I 'foraged' from a local eco-store which recently went out of business) which I boil for detergent, can take two hours instead of the normal ten minutes using the machine. Cycling 36 miles to the city and back takes a lot more time and energy than driving or catching the train, though it does provide me with a practical alternative to my old gym subscription. Finding stuff in skips – such as the steamer I cook with – takes longer than popping out to the shops. And the list goes on. The key point, however, is that I would rather have my time consumed doing things this way.

What will you do when the year is up?

I am now ten months into this experiment, and whilst it has been hugely challenging, I can no longer see myself going back to a life of credit and debt. I am much happier now than I was when I was earning a good salary, so why go back?

Do you think you’ve achieved anything on a more than personal level?

I've no idea really. Sometimes I feel small and that the problem too big. Every other person in the country uses money and its use has been such a taboo subject up to now. I often feel like the first vegan must have felt - quite alone in the world sometimes. But in some ways it’s irrelevant. As Gandhi said, "the truth is the truth regardless of whether you are a minority of one or a majority of millions." All I can do is my best to try and raise awareness of the issues as I see them, the rest is out of my hands.

What’s your advice to other people?

I would say that it’s good to think about where your food and 'stuff' comes from and of how people, animals and the environment have been treated in the process. Think about whether or not you are happy with the levels of industrialisation involved and if you feel that there are certain practices you should refrain from, and there are other habits you should start, then go for it. The main thing is to have no disparity between the head, the heart and the hands. I think that if we all resolved to live exactly the way we believed tomorrow, the world would be transformed and there would be much less destruction and suffering.

And last thoughts?

I honestly believe that until we give up money on a global scale, symptoms such as environmental destruction will inevitably exist. When people ask what I miss about my old life, I say bills, bank statements and the inevitable traffic jam on my way home from my old stressful job. Oh, and a quick pint of organic ale down the local.

Mark Boyle is the founder of The Freeconomy Community, the world’s fastest growing alternative economy – check it out at www.justfortheloveofit.org or email him at mark@justfortheloveofit.org

ReSource

www.freecycle.org

www.couchsurfing.com

www.hospitalityclub.org

www.readitswapit.co.uk

www.bookcrossing.com

www.swishing.org/

www.liftshare.com

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