Jo Nemeth of New South Wales speaks about her life living without money

“The main reason, though, is because I was sick of hearing about, reading about, seeing how everything I was buying was having these … really terrible impacts on other people around the world and on the biosphere.

“Every time I went to the shops, I had to choose between a bad product and a worse product, and it was just doing my head in.

“When I discovered that some people have chosen to live without money in the Western world, I thought, ‘Oh, maybe I can do that too’.

“I wrote a list of what I actually needed to survive and that took about 10 minutes. I thought that was going to be difficult but it was very easy, of course.”

She said she realised her principal needs were simply accommodation and food.

“What I needed to survive was not a lot, and I just started ticking off the list.

“Once I had worked those things out, I gave myself a year to prepare.”

Once her daughter Amy was finished with school, she gave her the last of her money and began living her new life.

Living off the land

Surviving without accommodation was the first challenge she faced in her new moneyless life.

“I was living in the country just outside of Lismore, and I knew some friends of mine lived down the road. And they had a big farm, and they were growing food in a market garden.

“I thought … they might need a hand.”

When she spoke to them about her experiment of living without money, they were initially confused but warmed to the idea, and she stayed there for just over a year, Nemeth said.

“It was a really lovely existence for a time.”

During this time, she said she discovered the concept of the “gift economy”.

“It’s like paying it forward. You do something for someone else without the expectation of something directly in return.

“The gift economy is about giving as you can, giving freely.

“It’s beautiful. It’s a lovely way to be if you can do it.”

“We actually are, all of us, involved in the gift economy. Because we all give without the expectation of return. We give presents, gifts, we give our time to help people out… In our monetary economy, it’s just a very small part.”

In 2016 she moved into town because she wanted to get more involved with her community, and hitchhiking in and out of town was not always efficient, Nemeth said.

“In town I’ve had to do a bit more bartering, which I find quite strange.”

Nemeth moved in with her best friend Sharon after her husband died and “helped her get back on her feet”, she said.

Once her friend sold her house, which was always the plan, Nemeth’s daughter Amy moved in to Sharon’s new place, and was shortly followed by Nemeth herself.

“I came to dog-sit and help to look after the dogs and hang out here in 2018, and then after that I kind of stayed and we worked out an arrangement.

“Sharon just said, ‘Look, I don’t want to do the gardening, but I want a garden. So can you just take over the gardening for me?’

“I’ve also been managing the household and making food, and doing things to reduce the household’s consumption and the need for them to buy things.”

Initially, she had been nervous to tell people about her idea to go moneyless.

But when she told her Sharon, she said it sounded great and that it was “exactly the kind of thing” she would expect from Nemeth.

“Since then it’s been great, I’ve had nothing but support from friends and family,” she said.

The health challenge

Nemeth said she always knew health would eventually pose a challenge to the moneyless life.

“Physically I’m okay, but I do have bad teeth, so I had a feeling my teeth would let me down and I’d need to go and get some dentistry. And I couldn’t figure out how to do that without money.

“I’m just about reaching my 10-year mark, and once I’ve reached that nice round figure, I’m going to start a GoFundMe campaign and get a dental fund going.

“So I am going to have a hiatus in living without money for a while while I get my teeth fixed, and then I’m going to continue with this as long as I can.”

‘Quite naive when I first started’

Things have definitely changed for Nemeth over the 10 years she’s been living this lifestyle.

“I was quite naive when I first started, you know, believing that when people hear about what I’m doing, [they’d] understand why I’m doing it … they would reduce their impacts and not buy so much stuff.

“I had these rose-coloured glasses on, and now I don’t have rose-coloured glasses on anymore.”

She said she was forced to face the reality that “things weren’t changing and they’re not going to change”.

Nemeth said she was not optimistic about the future.

“Nervous is an understatement. I am now what is referred to as ‘collapse aware’,” she said.

“I didn’t know that 10 years ago. I thought it was climate change and that was pretty bad. But I didn’t realise how bad, and I didn’t understand all of the crises we were facing.

“Now I need to grow my community even more, and grow more food and help cushion the fall,” she said.

“Globally, I think I’ve been able to inspire a lot of people … through the media, but I’m not sure how much people have been able to take on. You know, it’s hard.”

– RNZ