Diaper Swappers

Living Money Free

How long do you think you—or any of us, really—could live without using money? And by “money” I mean a single penny. I could go a day…maybe a week, as long as we had filled up the tank before the week started, and had done our grocery shopping. Even then, with all my needs met it would still be a hard week to get through. It might be close to torture, even! In our society, money is made king. Whether we like it or not, the statement itself is true, making even a week without spending money, even with all needs met, a tough thing to do.

And yet, living without money is exactly what one individual is attempting to do. His name is Daniel Suelo, he is fifty one years old and lives without money. Living without money means living without debt—yes, it’s true he doesn’t have a mortgage, but that also means that home for him is a cave in Utah. He eats off the land and even has been known to go searching in trash cans for his meals.

Back in 2000 he decided to live without money—and yes, this includes not accepting any form of government assistance, such as food stamps or other aid. A strong Christian believer, he wants to take God’s words of giving up possessions and owing no man very literary. In fact, he wants to model that life to the letter. Read more about him and his journey on his blog ZeroCurrency which he runs for free courtesy of the public library.

While I think that this man is a visionary of sorts who straightened out his priorities I also don’t believe we could function as a society this way. Maybe it could be possible in the future, but not at the moment, not in the current state of our world. I have two daughters, I have to have money to feed and clothe them. I want to be sure they are warm in the winter and have nutritious, healthy food on a regular basis. It is definitely admirable, and we all could use a little reminding of how consumer driven our culture has become, but I definitely don’t think most of us could or would choose to live this way.