Living Without Cash: Can You Do It?

Living without cash is an extreme idea, but Mark Boyle of The Freeconomy Community is doing it. In this article from The Guardian, he talks about his experiences and the reason behind his decision:

If we grew our own food, we wouldn’t waste a third of it as we do today. If we made our own tables and chairs, we wouldn’t throw them out the moment we changed the interior decor. If we had to clean our own drinking water, we probably wouldn’t contaminate it.

This article was controversial and received harsh criticism from some readers, which you can read if you scroll down to the comments section (Boyle responds to his critics here). As for my own opinion, while I don’t believe that everyone should (or can) do this, there are some important lessons we can take away from his experiment:

1) There are free or inexpensive solutions to most of our mundane problems, if we just get creative.

For example, here’s Boyle’s approach to getting free food:

There are four legs to the food-for-free table: foraging wild food, growing your own, bartering, and using waste grub, of which there is loads.

One of my goals in life is to grow at least 50% of what my family and pets eat. My garden right now isn’t successful enough to do that, but all I need is more research and practice. Bartering and foraging is something that Filipinos are good at, though foraging is harder in the suburbs. Still, I find the occasional wild malunggay, talbos ng kamote, and other vegetables growing in vacant lots.

As for using waste grub – the food that businesses and restaurants throw away – many Filipinos already do that. It’s called pangbabatchoy. Of course, they don’t do this by choice. They really have nothing else to eat, since they live on the streets. I saw a documentary about this a few years ago, and the only thing I can say is that I’m glad we don’t have as much food waste as they do in the UK (at least on the urban level, I don’t know about farm waste). Note that I’m not advocating this as an alternative.

So apart from bartering, foraging, and growing out own food, what other free solutions are out there?

• Set up a rain barrel system to harvest rainwater. You can use this rainwater to wash your car, water your plants, or even flush your toilet if you have plumbing skills. If you can get the barrel and pipes for free, that’s even better.
• Use kitchen and vegetable waste as compost. This will allow you to feed your garden at no cost. Warning: don’t compost dairy and meat products, manure, or plants that have been treated with chemicals.
• Pick up chopped branches and tree trunks and use as wood for furniture or decor. But only if you really want to do this, otherwise you’ll be spending hours suffering. I like doing this and actually made our Christmas tree. Even the shiny red ornaments I used were from a bag that my neighbors were gonna throw away (they were still good, I don’t know what they thought was wrong with them).

There are definitely more available solutions out there, more than I can cover in this post. The trick is to know how and where to look.

2) Let’s be conscious consumers.

Oftentimes the price of a product is rarely its sole price. For example, I found out that a certain company had union presidents murdered, and they continually commit human rights violations in their farms and factories all over the world. I can’t stand to bear that a single peso from my money would go to something like that, even if I used to enjoy some of their products in the past.

As Boyle pointed out in his article, there’s often this disconnect between us, the consumer, and the hands that make our products. While it’s impossible to find out all the practices of every company in the world, and our individual boycotts may not may much of a difference, being conscious consumers allows us to make purchases that align with our values.

What do you think of Mark Boyle’s cash-free life? Which aspects are applicable to your life? Which ones aren’t?

Image by lusi from sxc.hu