Truth Talk: On Living Without Money
Truth Talk: On Living Without Money
Transcript
The following is a transcription of Truth Talk: On Living Without Money, which is part of Robin’s “Truth Talks” series during his experiment in non-ownership.
For the full series and depth to this practice, visit: The Experiment in Non-Ownership – Robin Greenfield in Los Angeles.
Today I am going to share my relationship with money. This is a long journey of about 14 years of when I really started to transform my thoughts and my relationship around money. But I’m going to go back to childhood to some of the formation of my relationship around money. I’m going to speak probably for about a half hour to 40 minutes and then we’ll open it up for any questions that you have, and we’ll start with questions particularly around relating to money and how we exist in this world with money. And then if those are — if we run out of those, then we could enter into any questions at all.
So I guess I’ll start by saying at this moment right here in Griffith Park in Los Angeles I have not a penny to my name. I have literally not a penny, not a dime, not a nickel, not a quarter, not a dollar. I have no bank account, no credit cards, no Venmo or PayPal or Zelle. No Bitcoin or any cryptocurrencies, no life savings or retirement fund. No health insurance, literally. And I’ve even gone as far as anybody who would have potentially had me in their Will, said, “Please remove me from your Will.” I have, to the best of my ability, not a single penny to my name.
Rewind to about 14 years ago. I had just arrived in Southern California. I had just moved to San Diego, California and my goal was to be a millionaire by the time I was 30. Obviously something changed to be where I am today. I was running a marketing company — at the peak of that marketing company there was about 20 people working for the company as independent contractors and at the age of 25 I was on track to become a millionaire by making six figures in a year and everything was going according to plan. Really, I was happy, healthy, you know, financially successful, had love, had friendships, was traveling the world, and things changed drastically. Before I share what changed drastically I want to go back to the sort of beginning — to my childhood — because that gives a very important foundation to my relationship, why the way I’ve related with money.
So I grew up in a small town of 8,620 people called Ashland, in northern Wisconsin, on Lake Superior, and I was born to my mother and my dad, and we grew up very low income. So my mom ended up being a single mother of four children from three different dads and she had — she made about $15,000 a year or so, and I think one of the three dads paid child support. I remember ‘Welfare Santa’ coming and delivering our presents for Christmas and we got a lot of support from the government. We got about $550 a month in food stamps. I remember being so ashamed of being on food stamps. This was back when you got actual pieces of paper that looked like money, so when you were checking out it was obvious that you had food stamps.
And so my childhood was one of … we were very low income. But we had an aunt who supported us, my mom’s dad, my grandpa, supported us and the US government supported us, as well as the community. So I basically had everything that I needed as a kid and more but — I always felt this shame, this embarrassment, and so a large portion of my younger years were hiding who I was. I happened to have friends that had wealthy parents and I would go to their house and I was constantly comparing, you know, me to them, and what I really wanted to be was normal. And I saw normal as having lots of money, you know, normal was the nuclear family, the nice house, the fancy car — or at least decent car — without rust on it, and in all of this normalcy I saw money as the gateway. So from a young age that’s what I wanted. I wanted money enough to be normal and enough to be more than just normal but to be loved. ‘Cause, I mean, in this society, what’s more acceptable than being a millionaire. I mean, now things are changing within our demographic, but generally in our society being a millionaire is like, that’s great, you’re successful, you’re loved, people want that and so my relationship with money started with my lack of having it and my desire to have it, because I saw it as freedom and I saw it as normalcy — which normalcy was belonging, being loved, being acknowledged, being seen, etc.
I also loved the Earth very much and so my early years were this sort of combination of … part of me was just driven for, well … a great way to demonstrate this is, I, as a child, I thought I might become a marine biologist or a banker — those were, like, two of my — it really showed, you know, when a banker came in for “Show and Tell” Day. I was like, yes, tell me what I need to do to get that money. So as a young kid I had a paper route starting in sixth grade, I collected cans and brought them in for scrap metal, we had Kool-Aid stands. I counted, I kept track of every dollar that went in and out of my hands from a very young age.
And so I went to university for biology with aquatic science as a concentration and during that time I went to a meeting for this internship of selling books door to door and they told me I could earn $9,000 in a summer, which for me, that was a lot as a college student, to be able to earn $9,000 in a summer, and I was somewhat sold. But there was no way I was giving up my freedom, you know, summertime and I went back the next day and I said, you know what, I’ve thought about it and I’m not going to do it. Well, a half-hour later he had convinced me and, you know, end of the semester I was on a car ride out to Burbank, California from Wisconsin — just miles from where we’re sitting right now — with the aspiration of making my $9,000 in a summer.
It went really poorly. For the first couple weeks I was, like, dead last in the company. I was selling almost nothing, working 80 plus hours per week, in fact a minimum of 84 hours a week that summer. And then something clicked. On week three, I just started selling and so that summer I made $18,000 working 80 to 90 hours for the entire summer. And I saw, like, I can make a lot of money, you know, if you did that for a year that’d be $80,000 in 2005. As a 19-year-old, like, I saw that I had the potential to make a lot of money.
I learned how to run my own sort of business as I was working as an independent contractor. I learned how to do taxes and so I learned that I could, instead of — at that time, my thought was — instead of working on the water as, say, a marine biologist, I could just do sales and marketing for a portion of the year and then just be outside for the rest of that year, free. So I got pretty sucked into that. I did that every summer in university, continued to have that same level of success, and then my last summer, I branched out from that and I started to sell advertising to businesses and trying to start up more of a long-term business. That’s what I did for some time. Of course, there’s a lot of other things going on in life, but for the sake of brevity that’s …. I’m going to try to stick to just money.
And then after about a year, I ended up coming out to San Diego, California, partnering in a marketing company with a couple of middle-aged guys who had been my managers in — I was selling advertising on shopping carts at grocery stores on those little placards as well as on the register tape receipts — so I joined them, but I quickly left them because although I was money hungry and was willing to cut corners, and, you know, sell what I needed to sell, their level of integrity did not match up with mine, of, you know, actually doing what we told the customers we were going to do and delivering the products at the very least.
So I started my company in the Fall of 2011. And, I decided to use the company as a tool for positive change. I joined “1% for the Planet,” committing to donating 1% of our revenue to environmental non-profits and starting different environmental initiatives. So I had my foot in both worlds, of wanting to make a lot of money and be successful, and also, I was starting to be awakened to the reality of the world we live in, that our monetary system is a part of such incredible destruction. “Zeitgeist” was one of the early films that I saw that taught about the monetary system and how it is just not what we are told that it is.
What I learned is that with every dollar that I was spending, I was part of systems of destruction. Every time I was swiping my credit card, there was exploitation and extraction taking place. With every investment that I had, I was involved in all sorts of things that were not in alignment with my belief system. So I was realizing that even if I was going to be making money and using it as a positive tool, I was going to be tied into these systems that were not in alignment with my belief systems. I realized that behind every transaction, there was human suffering. There was destruction of our ecosystems and our natural world, There was exploitation of the plants and animals that we share this home with.
So, I was in this very tricky place. I was now running a marketing company, enjoying the work that I was doing, finding my meaning and purpose in part through this, and at the same time, realizing that if I continued this I would be living a life of substantial hypocrisy. That my life and my actions would not be in alignment with my belief systems.
To give an example of that, I realized that when I was paying federal taxes, as much as half of our federal taxes are going toward war, the military industrial complex, police brutality, the prison systems, bailing out the big banks, the pharmaceutical industry, big AG, the fossil fuel industries. Like, every time I was making money and paying taxes, I was supporting this. I was supporting the building of major dams that were flooding ecosystems in Chile and Argentina, for example. I was part of all of this. The money that I had in my JP Morgan Chase bank account was all invested in destruction. My life savings, my IRAs were all invested in fossil fuels. So at that point, I realized that I had to make a radical transformation in my relationship with money. I wasn’t able to do that overnight, but to start with, it was simply … the concept that I had learned was the concept of demonetizing our lives.
In our society, almost everything we do is monetized. Down to the point today, where like, most people have to pay for their children to be watched. Something that for 99.9% of human existence, WE watched our children. But instead, now people have to make 30, 40, 50,000 dollars a year just for someone to watch their kids so that they can be making money in order to meet all the other needs of the bills, etc.
So, I learned that almost every single thing I was doing was monetized. So it came down to … my quest was to demonetize my life. Figure out how I could actually meet all of my needs without money, through having relationships with the Earth, through having relationships with my people, and having relationships with the plants and animals that we share this home with.
So that came down to learning skills: growing food, foraging, how to fix things, riding my bike rather than driving my car, getting my exercise outdoors, by being outside rather than having a gym membership, looking at all the bills I had and thinking, “How can I remove this bill and this bill and this bill?” And so, for about three years, my objective was in every way in which I was dependent upon money, finding an alternative way to meet my needs. And again, that was through skills, that was through resourcefulness, that was through problem solving and that was
through building relationships. Relationships with people … that’s one that’s easy to understand,
and relationships with the plants. Foraging, for example. Now I … there’s over 300 foods that I know how to forage from the earth. That’s all that I don’t have to go to the grocery store for.
Early on, one of my big realizations was food. That’s one of our biggest expenses. I started dumpster diving and learned that I could collect thousands of dollars of perfectly good food and live almost exclusively, or actually exclusively off food that was thrown away.
In 2014, I biked across the country raising awareness about food waste and from the Mississippi River to New York City, I lived only on food that was wasted. And that was actually … a big portion of that … I did that bicycle ride without money as well. So, I was learning in depth, more and more, chipping away at this monetary system.
At that time, I also did moneyless adventures. The idea being … the first adventure was, I landed in Cabo, Mexico with no money, just the clothes on my back and my iPhone on airplane mode, and I had to make it back without money. If you are looking for a way to force yourself to practice a non-monetary way of being, that was it. I had no choice. I had to learn to live without money.
And then I did that again from Panama. I landed in Panama. This time with just the clothes on my back, no phone either, and it took me 37 days to get back. And part of that was to show that people are good, unlike the mainstream media shows that there’s this belief that our neighbors to the south are bad people, and that we need to fear … no, the reality is that most people are good. But the other aspect is that this forced me to test my philosophy of living without money through relationships, through problem solving and through skills. So, in my early years, that’s a lot of what I was doing: these adventures and these deep immersions.
In 2016, I moved into a tiny house. And when I did that, it was a 50’ square tiny house that I bought for $950 on Craigslist. When I did that, I moved out of my apartment, which meant cancelling all of my bills, all of my utilities and getting my life down to just one bill, which was my cell phone. I believe I still had my cell phone at that time. And so, … Let’s see … I have some notes here. So at that time, I also mentioned, I cancelled all my credit cards. Early on, what I did was I took my money out of all the big banks and switched to a local credit union. At that time, in 2015, I wrote 2015 was my first year of making no money. And this was what I wrote for my budget: zero dollars rent, zero dollars utilities, zero dollars cell phone, zero dollars debt bills, zero dollars car. I had already gotten rid of that in 2012. Zero in taxes, zero in retirement savings, zero in renter’s insurance, zero in gym membership, a little bit in alcohol and drugs at that time. It wasn’t zero, but it was close. Zero dollars in children. I had had a vasectomy in 2012. Zero dollars in pets, zero dollars in mortgage. My expenses were about $3,600 in food for a year; $200 for dentist, yearly checkup; some personal travel and small expenses like bike maintenance, carshare program, clothing, personal hygiene items, laundry, medical expenses, growing food for others; giving water-efficient faucets and energy-efficient bulbs to friends to lower their resource consumption.
So in 2015, I had really cut things back majorly. And then, in 2015, that’s when I took my first financial vows. So I decided I was going to take a pretty radical stance as to how I was going to have a relationship with money for my decade moving forward. So, at that time, I made a lifetime commitment that I would earn no more than the federal poverty threshold per year, which, at that time, was $15,000. So that was it. $15,000 was the maximum amount that I would make per year. And that’s when … at that point, then I got rid of my tiny house and got my life down to owning just 111 possessions and set out on the road.
In 2017, I wrote an article that was called “Not a Penny to My Name: A Milestone Few Strive For.” So 2017 was the first time I got my life down to no money. It only lasted for three days though. That was challenging at that time. Let’s see. Is there anything else I want to say on that little chapter.
So, there’s definitely a couple things that I’m missing, but I want to keep moving forward. Well, okay, there is one other aspect. Dissolving the company. I mentioned that there was a company. In 2014, or 2015, I dissolved the company and switched over to running a non-profit. I’m going to give a little bit of what was going on there. As the company was dissolving, I had actually invested in some medical marijuana. That was part of where I was on track to becoming a millionaire and as I was opting out, the money was really opting in to my life. I was biking across the country in 2014, and I had … well, around that time, when you saw the “teeny greenie,” the little tiny house that I lived in, I had over 100,000 dollars in gold and silver coins and $100 bills buried underneath that tiny house in the backyard where I was staying. I was opting out of the monetary system, but I was still using it. It was a very interesting time.
Also, if you watch my Truth Series, I finally publicly shared that the Securities and Exchange Commission was after me during that time, the SEC, because of some of my financial investments in medical marijuana.
So it was an interesting time of breaking free from the monetary system, yet money coming in, wanting to use money as a tool of change, also wanting to opt myself fully out of the monetary system. And all of that being in ebb and flow. Because this was only four years after I had woken up to the truth of the monetary system. This stuff takes time. To opt out of the monetary system is not something that is very easy to do in a day, a week, a month or even for most of us, even a decade. Because of how deeply entrapped we are in it.
So, basically, before I began traveling and I got rid of my tiny house, I had used a lot of that money over the years in my environmental activism campaign, donated it to non-profits, and used it for different … mostly as, you know, tools for positive change.
So 2014 was the last time I filed federal income taxes. And 2015 was when I made a lifetime commitment to never paying federal taxes again. So that’s a movement that started largely in the Vietnam Era, being a federal tax resister. The way that is fully legal is by earning less than the federal poverty threshold. As long as you’re earning less than the federal poverty threshold, you don’t need to pay, you’re not required to pay, you don’t owe any federal taxes. So it’s completely legal. I’m not breaking any law by not paying federal income taxes. But again, what I’m not paying into is police brutality, the military industrial complex, war, and the many things that I mentioned earlier.
The other lifetime vow that I made at that time … it wasn’t that I didn’t want to contribute. I was dedicated to contributing. So what I vowed to was that I would donate 100% of my media income to non-profits that were doing the work for the people. So by doing that, I created my own tax system. I was opting out of this tax system of corruption and destruction, opting into a voluntary tax system that actually truly served the Earth and the people.
So around that time, I had my first TV show with the Discovery Channel and in the contract, which I would have been paid $30,000 for, instead, it had, I think, a list of ten non-profits and Discovery Channel donated what ended up being $26,000 after the entertainment lawyer, which … what a goof to work with an entertainment lawyer … all of that went directly to the non-profits.
So I was crafting this system. How do I still use money? How do I still have the flow of money? Remove myself from it but use it as a tool for positive change. So that was the commitment to donating 100% of my media earnings to non-profits.
At the same time, that’s when I made my lifetime vow to earn below the federal poverty threshold. It was $11,000 a year before, now it’s up to $15,000. But since then, I haven’t earned more than $10,000 a year.
And then the other commitment I made was a lifetime vow to financial transparency. So, my belief is that if our corporations and our politicians were required to be simply transparent with their money – where it comes from and where it goes – that most of what’s happening behind closed doors, well, there would no longer be closed doors. It would be open to the public. I believe that transparency is one of the most important aspects that we can commit to that really serve the people and really serve the Earth.
And then the other vow is to adhere to ethical financial practices. So that included divesting from all investments that were taking part in destruction and to just looking at all the ways that I was involved in money.
So all of this is detailed on my website. You can go to robingreenfield.org/vows if you want to dive into a deeper understanding of these things. And, yeah, there’s more that I could say on that, but I’ll leave it there for now.
The next little chapter in the journey was around 2013 when I settled into Orlando, Florida, I decided to see what was my credit score after all this. Not having any cards or any accounts, and my credit score was actually not zero at that time. It was actually non-existent. I no longer have a credit score, as of around 2018. And that was a monumental moment, to see that I had opted out enough that I was no longer in the credit score system.
My net worth, when you Google my … or any Ecosia or Bing or any different web browser such as Google … my name … one of the first things that pops up is “Robin Greenfield net worth.” So I know that a lot that society wants to know about public figures is their net worth. Why? Partly because we’re a society that bases our beliefs of people on how much money they have. So my net worth since 2015, the max it has ever been is $13,000 through all of this. And it’s generally ranged from about $2,000 – $10,000. My financial net worth has been about $7,000 and then my material possessions has been between a couple to $5,000. And as of now, my net worth is zero. For the first time. And it’s going to be that way for awhile.
A couple other things. You know, my YouTube channel … a lot of people on the internet … you friends out there, watching on the internet … I don’t monetize my YouTube channel. That’s one of my stances against, yeah, monetizing our lives, monetizing our message and the ability for corporations to buy integrity and buy credibility. So I’ve never monetized my YouTube channel and it is something I plan to never do. And a lot of people say, “Well, if you monetize your YouTube channel, then you could do so much good with that money.” It’s not that much money, and I believe that my integrity is far more valuable than the money that they would give me.
Now I have had companies pay social media collaborations. As part of my commitment where 100% of my media earnings are donated to non-profits, it goes directly to non-profits. But that’s been an area where it’s been challenging to my integrity. To give you an example of that, a few years ago I actually did a commercial for Acer laptops, where I had the laptop. And it was a sustainable laptop. And well … in reality, it was more sustainable than most laptops out there.
But it was greenwashing. And they used me … I mean, I knew what I was doing … but they used me as saying, “Look at this environmental activist with our computer.” And probably some people bought it because of that. I played a role in their greenwashing. Why? Not because I wanted to be on the commercial. I did my best to see that nobody saw that commercial. I wasn’t looking for fame. Not because I wanted money. I didn’t get a penny from that. But because I was trying to use money as a tool for positive change. It was $32,000. It was less than two days’ work. And I had a team of people working with me at the time, living in a house. It was like an internship program where I was partly paid and then partly the living experiences … the living expenses. And we could plant a lot of trees and we could give a lot of seeds to people! But, you know what? That company bought some of my integrity in that moment and it wasn’t worth the $32,000 now. I really don’t think that it was.
So as of late, I have come to the place where the reason I can be sitting here with zero dollars is that I really do believe that for me personally, some people – their most powerful asset to society might be running a non-profit to provide a lot of resources to people in need. And to others, it might be running a business that generates millions of dollars that go back to the people. But for me, I think that what I have that is most valuable is my integrity. And as long as I have been involved in the system, I have not been able to live up to the integrity that I would like to. So, right now, to the best of my ability, I am just removing myself from the monetary system, hoping that living my life to the deepest level of integrity that I can will be much more valuable than anything that I would ever be able to generate with money.
Then, just a last couple-few notes before opening it up to questions: a couple things that I want to share … I think some of these things will very much resonate with people. Now we’re talking about, okay, how to live without money. You know, I talked … hopefully that wasn’t too long as far as diving into my deep relationship and the transformation and all of that, ‘cause what I do
want to talk about is, how to live without money.
So the first thing that I want to share is that one of the most important aspects of how to live without money. Anyone want to guess what I’m about to say?
“Community.”
Community is definitely one of the big ones.
“Sharing.”
Sharing. Definitely one of the big ones.
“Volunteering?”
Volunteering. Absolutely.
“Self-reliance?”
Yeah. Relationships and skills is one thing that I have. But there’s one thing above it, actually.
“Shedding everything you don’t need.”
Shedding everything you don’t need is a big one.
“Not needing much.”
Not needing much. Absolutely. Minimalism. That’s another.
“Non-attachment.”
Non-attachment. Definitely. I’m lovin’ this.
“Mental mastery?”
Yeah. Mastery of your own mind. Mental mastery. This is all … thank you for giving my talk for me.
“Doing less?”
Doing less. I love it.
Yeah, focusing on things that are actually valuable, like loving people.
All of this ties in … nobody has said the exact word. It’s shedding the societal norms. Which is very aligned with what you just said. But yeah, dissolving the societal norms. Letting go of the societal norms, the status quo, needing to look a certain way, needing people to like us, needing to be validated. When I look at the core of so much of the attachments that I have had with money, it was that: the concern of how I would be perceived. So, what I started to do early on was, instead of asking questions of how will I be perceived, my new question became would this way of living be beneficial to the Earth, beneficial to my community, and beneficial to myself. And if the answer to that was “yes,” then I could let go of the rest. So letting go of societal norms is a really big part of it.
The other part … another one is relationships and skills. When we have relationships, money falls away. For example, I mentioned the childcare earlier on. We can take care of each other’s children. We can take care of children together in a non-monetized way. If you look at all the skills that we have here today together, and if we all banded together to share those skills in a non-monetized way, we would be able to meet so many of the needs that we have without money. So skills: growing food, foraging, dumpster diving, creating. You know, being able to make things: our own clothes, building our own homes, carpentry, tool work. Let’s hear some other skills that help to decrease our involvement with money. What comes to mind?
“Teaching of modalities that destress us such as meditation …”
Yep. Meditation, breathwork, yoga.
“Walking.”
Walking.
“Healthwork. [unintelligible]”
Yeah, natural medicine and health work, all can be done in a totally non-monetized way.
“Cycling.”
Yep, riding a bike. Music. Music doesn’t have to cost us a penny. Singing. Our voices don’t cost a penny.
“Games.”
What? Yeah, playing games. It doesn’t cost any money to play games.
“Dancing. We love doing that.”
Dancing. Yeah. Nature. Here we are under the sky. On the Earth.
“Swimming. Surfing. Well, I guess you need a board. But you can borrow a board.”
Yep. Yep.
“Body surf.”
Yep. So skills is a big part of it. I’m actually going to read some of these off. Gardening, foraging, cooking, food preservation, composting, bicycle maintenance, repair skills, carpentry, sewing and clothes making, rainwater harvesting, resourcefulness, critical thinking, problem solving, frugality, positive thinking, physical endurance, gratitude, mindfulness, and compassionate communication are some of the skills that aid in living a life with less money. I have created deep community around shared values and together we help to meet one another’s needs with less need for money.
So, as far as community goes, one community that I highly recommend is called Earth Skills. How many of you have heard of Earth Skills Gatherings? I’m so glad to introduce this to so many of you. It’s a very Los Angeles thing to not have heard of Earth Skills. It’s part of why I’m here in Los Angeles. Earth Skills are gatherings where you come together to learn the skills to live in harmony and to work with Earth. Where people with deep skills and deep practice are able to teach these skills.
Well, you said, “needing less.” That’s another way of living simply. So Gandhi said, “Live simply so that others may simply live.” And, I want to dive into that for just one minute. A lot of people don’t quite understand the depth of that. When you realize that everything … almost every action that we’re taking is monetized, and that every action that we’re taking is tied deeply to industrialization and globalization, you realize, the food that we’re eating, the car that we’re driving, the gas that we’re pumping into the car, the stuff we’re buying, the trash that we’re creating …. When we’re not doing that in a simple manner, somebody is suffering for us. Whenever we buy into consumer convenience, the burden is being placed elsewhere. I like to put it in the concept of the theory, or the rule, that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. The same goes for consumer convenience. Wherever that consumer convenience is means someone else not only doesn’t have convenience, they’re paying for our convenience and they are suffering the burden. And so, that’s what Gandhi means when he says, “Live simply so that others may simply live.” We live in a way, where our iPhones … people are literally jumping out
of the factories to commit suicide because of the conditions they are working in. The suffering and the depression of working these long days in really not ideal conditions to making this technology. That’s a deep example of why living simply is so important.
And as far as demonetizing your life, living simply is the key. So much of what you described: the sky above us, the ground below us, singing, being, communing with nature, communing with others, all of this is ways to live simply. To fill us up … that don’t take away.
So many people think that as we let go we are going to have these holes inside of us, but the reality is true in my experience. We shed the extraneous. We shed the things that are no longer serving us so that we can create space for what really brings us joy and connection and value. This is what creates peace inside. This is what allows us to live in the present moment. To exist in a state of gratitude. And gratitude may be the most powerful tool that I know of for demonetizing your life. Because once you are grateful, you have everything you need.
Now, I want to give a little asterisk to that. There is some privilege in that statement. That people who have so little, that they are struggling to just get the meal for that day, it would be pretty hard to say that if they have gratitude they will have everything they need. That statement applies deeply to people with privilege. That said, it applies to every human being in the world. Because you can look at people who are suffering greatly and when they are existing in a state of gratitude, they are having a very substantially different experience from someone who is existing in the exact same situation but is not focusing on gratitude.
I could talk about my non-profit. I guess … I’ll just mention in a little blip … and that is to say that in 2014 I founded a non-profit called Happy, Healthy and Free. I dissolved that after some years because I wanted to try to completely remove myself from the monetary system. In 2020, I started Regeneration, Equity and Justice. I had touched on that with the team of people working with me in Asheville, North Carolina, and St. Pete (Florida). And I just want to say, as far as my relationship with living without money, I do … like, I have no money right now. The non-profit does have a bank account. I don’t have access to it and it only has $5,000 in it. It’s a very grassroots non-profit. But it is one way in which … a very important asterisk is needed. And that that still exists, and I’m still, you know, involved in money. You can read about that online. The non-profit … I have taken the non-profit to a very interesting realm in transparency. So, our non-profit – we have one financial ledger and every transaction that we make goes onto that is publicly viewable, publicly available. As in real time. So you can see where we’re spending our money. And I write really in depth about that on the website.
So, yeah. Last couple of notes. That brings me to today where I exist in this state without a penny to my name. It feels joyous. I’m nine days in to not having a penny, and I do not think about money at all. It has been a non-existent thought. Why? Because of what I just shared.
Building of community. Like, here we are. I’ve got the oranges that I need, I’ve got this water in front of me that people shared. I have my basic needs met because I have built relationships with the Earth, I have built relationships with the community, I have built relationships with the plants and animals, I have found a home inside of myself. [Takes a drink.] Thank you water, for being you.
And, I’ll mention also, I did this recent “Truth Series,” sharing everything that I was hiding or guarding, anything that I was, you know, embarrassed or ashamed of, and one of those is my financial past. So, that released like … as far as being a human being existing in a state of financial transparency, if you’re interested in that kind of thing, that’s a series that’s worth watching.
The notes are over. So, on that note, I would love to open it up to questions that you have as far as money goes, and for those of you out there who are watching online, I welcome you to tune in. I’m going to respond by sharing each question in case you can’t hear it, and for everybody. So we’ll take maybe five questions on living without money or money in general before it gets dark.
“First of all, I want to say thank you for the talk and that video resume. I used to live in Mexico the same way, backpack, no money, volunteering, hitchhiking, surviving, camping … and … but the thing is, what I found here, what [unintelligible] is like let’s say have to go to [unintelligible] where I have to spend like half my time to get a free place to eat, right? And that costs like a hundred pesos, or $5 a day. And I was thinking, like, okay, if I spend the same 20 hours a week working the jobs here, I can make way more [unintelligible] for an entire month. [unintelligible]
So the question? Do you want to [unintelligible] the question?
So, for this time of this little gathering together to answer questions, my one and only request would be that while you’re here … I have a hard time focusing if there are side conversations going on. So, just for the next fifteen minutes that we’re doing this, if you don’t mind, if you do want to have other conversations, just go hang under that tree over there and then come back or, you know, another tree. Does that sound good to everyone?
So, the question was: I can related to what … what was your name again? “Felix.” I can relate to what Felix was sharing. Like, if you’re living with no money, you end up spending so much time sometimes just trying to meet your needs, like it’s literally a quarter to ride the train or the bus in Mexico City, but you don’t even have a quarter, so then you gotta walk eight hours across town for something that would have cost 25 cents. Is that … ?
“Yeah. … [unintelligible]”
I got it. I got it. So, that’s something I’ve experienced a fair bit and it is often sort of exhausting having no money. Having no money is exhausting. Generally. Now, I will say that what I’m doing in this moment is not exhausting at all and I have the most energy that I’ve ever had. So this is actually a moment where I’ve broken free from that experience. Could I keep that up forever? Probably not though. It would probably become exhausting. So you have to find the balance that works for you. That’s what this comes down to. With any of the things that I talk about: I take things to an extreme. But you have to adapt the philosophies, the practices, into your life in a way that works for you. We all have our own unique life. We can’t look at anybody else and say whatever they’re doing, I’m going to do just that. We have to look at the people we learn from and we say, “What are they doing? How can I adapt this to my life to live the life that I want?”
I found that there’s a certain threshold where if you go below that as far as money, then you spend so much time trying to meet your needs. And you have to decide: do you want to be spending your life meeting those needs or do you want to be doing something else? Because you can live a joyful and valuable life just meeting your needs. That’s in part what we have done as humanity for a long time. So you can just get into the present moment where all I want to do is be fully present and joyful in meeting my basic needs and I’m not on this big mission to change the world. Or I’m not trying to travel the world, or I’m not trying to, you know, excel in something. All I want to do is live simplicity to the extreme and meet my needs. So then it could work to have very little money. The more needs you have, the harder it is to do with very little money. So, it’s just a matter of finding that balance and everybody has to find the balance that works for them.
“Do you ever [unintelligible]?”
Could I ever see myself being in the monetary world as far as bringing money through the non-profit to use those resources? Possibly. I would like to be planting millions of community fruit trees, where they’re publicly accessible for everybody to enjoy. And that’s something that ideally I’d have … you know, to do that, millions of dollars would be needed to facilitate that.
So the point was, Ant asked, would I potentially want to bring in funds in order to be able to accomplish tasks like that? And the answer is “maybe.” Right now, I don’t. Like, right now, if somebody said, “Here, I have all of this money and I’d like you to use it, I would say, “Come talk to me later.” Because I really want to be experimenting in other areas. So, we’ll see in that regard [unintelligible/wind interference].
Yeah. Any questions?
“Umm. I really appreciate your sharing not using any money [unintelligible]. I resonate with it because I went on a similar journey when I moved to Mexico. I was getting into environmental activism, protesting pipelines, and I went off a train of, like, hitchhiking through Mexico with no money, no [unintelligible], not knowing where I’m going to sleep tonight, not knowing where my next meal is. So I agree with Felix here, it might be easier not to do that. But I think that I had to do that in order to see what it’s like and experience all of humanity. And at the time, I was really depressed and suicidal, so I think it was even worse at the time. So I wouldn’t suggest for anyone to do that because I didn’t really feel worthy at the time. So I didn’t know how to navigate through that experience, but I think I did that because my soul wanted to experience all humanity. And so, coming from that journey into now, you remind me again, I still have this confliction on both sides because I don’t want to support the wars, I don’t want to support the destruction of our planet and all these different things. But I want to plant a million trees. I want to support ecovillages, I want to support community [unintelligible] and water projects and all the things to regenerate the planet, and I want [unintelligible] and so, yeah, I’m just wondering if you can share any advice on how to navigate this shift.”
[unintelligible] …how to be able to have usage of funds. Can you refine exactly what your question is?
“Yeah. How letting go … even seeing you here, and I appreciate just arriving at the same time as you also shifting my perspective of arriving in L.A. and actually letting go of attachments to where I am, in reference to location, but the confliction of “do I pursue that money road?” And do I pursue getting as many resources as I can of the dollar or not?
I guess what’s alive in me is I don’t know if I really have anything to contribute. It’s just you have to decide for yourself which route you want to go. You know, you can go either way. Umm, but I can’t think of anything that’s coming alive as far as suggestions in that realm.
“Would you consider using money again for yourself, or is that something you’re not, ‘cause …”
Yeah, I’m sure I will.
“And have you thought about how we can exist in this society using some kind of alternative currency [unintelligible] and I believe in a world where we’re exchanging energy without using the currency [unintelligible].”
Yeah. There’s so many ways that we can create systems of exchange. There’s so many systems of exchange that do exist. Time-based are a wonderful way to do that and [unintelligible] skill exchanges and localized currencies. I’m an advocate for localized rather than large-scale, centralized systems. Because those allow for more of the nuances of relationships. And so, yep, that’s at the heart of being able to break free from the monetary system … is creating localized systems of exchange that aren’t tied to destruction, but instead, helping each other to meet our basic needs and accomplish whatever it is we are trying to accomplish.
“I just feel like if we had a platform where everyone could offer their services and requests and everything and everyone can get connected to what they need, whether that be …. “
Yeah, there’s many platforms like that that exist: time banks and skill shares being a couple of those, so definitely joining those. That’s one thing that I didn’t [unintelligible]. Did you have a question?
“Yeah, is it sad that I have a few?”
Well, start with one and we’ll see where we go.
“I didn’t come here with this intention, but it dawned on me that I could ask you a question for a project. And one of the concepts around the project is, like, human self-care routines or needs especially as an extreme user demographic, which I feel like you would qualify. So I guess the question is what do you consider your self-care routine or, like, in what ways would you improve it?”
Self-care. Would you be talking more about personal hygiene or just all self-care?
“Both.”
Okay. Well as far as personal hygiene goes, contrary to what the corporations want us to believe, we don’t need most of their products. Our bodies existed long before their products existed and a lot of these exist primarily because of deeply unquestioned societal norms as well as products that are designed because they’re thinking, “How can we make some money?” Through a product. So, for example, deodorants. I used to use Old Spice deodorant and 13 or so years ago I thought to myself, if my armpits are sweating, maybe I don’t want to block that sweating. I learned that there’s aluminum in antiperspirants that actually contribute to Alzheimer’s. So we have these products that we actually know do more harm than good. And so, being able to break free from societal norms and, for example, with smell. There’s no animal that we would say, “You have a smell. Therefore, something is wrong.” We accept that all animals have some smell. Why wouldn’t we have some smell as animals? So being able to accept the societal norm and actually saying, “Yeah, I smell a little bit. None of us want to smell in a way where everybody’s heads turn as we walk down the street, but to have some natural smell is just totally reasonable. It’s only unreasonable in a society that has lost their connection with themselves. So at the heart of it is again, the dissolving of attachment to societal norms. I actually in depth cover this on my website at robingreenfield.org/hygiene and I have a 20-minute video that shares how I meet my basic hygiene needs with the Earth, rather than through products. So, I would recommend looking into that.
And then as far as self-care, the same thing goes. Like, we don’t need to keep buying products that are exfoliants that have plastics in them that just goes down the drain, when we could use
just the sand, as an example of self-care. And as far as other self-cares, you know, when we’re breathing fresh air, when we’re with the Earth, when we’re with community, when we’re eating nourishing food. My self care is very much based on the natural things that are freely and abundantly available to us rather than products. Does that give some insight into that question?
“In what way could you improve it?”
What ways could you improve it?
“Do you think you could improve it?”
Me personally? Oh, nothing comes to mind at this immediate moment. There’s a balance. Like, but at this moment, nothing comes to mind. I will think about that. Thanks. Did you have a question?
“Yeah. I’m curious to know your experience doing this experiment living without infrastructure, without ownership of things. What is your experience of living in a world where most of the people do live in a world with those things, like, do you butt up against those things when you are dumpster diving or, like, staying in the park with park rangers? How is your interaction?”
Well, I can tell you right now that I am pretty certain that that park ranger over there is watching me right now. And I can tell you that because I gave a talk two nights ago, and when everybody left, they drove right over to here and they followed me for an hour. It took me awhile to be certain that they were following me, but after the third time I moved, and after they followed me all the way to Franklin, which is a half mile out of the park, so I’m pretty sure that’s … so I’m definitely running into some challenges of that aspect of society. I’ll give the large disclaimer that I am a person of incredible privilege and that I have no issue. Like plenty of you would say, “Oh, come stay at my place for the night. I don’t have any real concerns for my safety or security. My basic needs are met. But, as far as operating in … I mean, that’s part of the idea of this experiment of having nothing, is to exist in a way where the people around me have the opportunity to question their own relationships with the Earth and with each other. And it’s a challenging one. It puts myself into a place where I definitely have less comfort than I have at other times. I certainly … I couldn’t keep this up forever. I’m not physically … well, I’m not emotionally developed enough to keep this up forever. It is taxing to live outside, as any person who lives outside would tell you. So this experiment is for three months. It could go longer or not. So there’s a time limit on it, which also helps the morale knowing that. But, for the most part, over the last years, I’ve put in some practice that I don’t care what people are thinking about me. Like, when I’m eating out of the dumpster down two miles from here and people are walking past watching me, it’s like, I don’t care. And, in fact, I take joy in being outside of those societal norms. So a big part of it for me is that I want to take societal norms and not only …. So for example, dumpster diving. To a lot of people, there’s only one reason you would dumpster dive. And it’s because you have no other option. I don’t want to just neutralize it. I want to flip it. And turn dumpster diving into something you can actually take joy and meaning and have a community around and have real purpose in and that’s absolutely happened. Like, a lot of … to some people, dumpster diving … they look down on you. Other people, if you’re dumpster diving, they’re like, “Can I come?” Like, “I want to dumpster dive!” And in many people’s minds, it’s a cool thing. So that’s part of my job – is to help to flip the stigma on a lot of these things. Does that give some insight into that?
“Yeah, they do.”
Okay, I see you’re next. So, umm, Ryan.
“[unintelligible] My question would be, if you could speak to everyone in the country, what would you say to everyone?”
Nothing very different from what I’ve been saying for the last little while. If I was to try to boil my message down more simply, it would just be to ask the question: Are you living in a way where your actions are in alignment with your beliefs? Are you finding deep meaning and purpose in what you’re doing? Are you really happy? And if the answer is “no,” are there things that you could do to move your life down the path that you want it to be? And, I guess, a big part of it is, do you want to be living in a way that causes destruction or do you want to be living in a way that creates harmony? So if your answer is causing destruction, great. Keep going. But if your answer is that you want to be living in a way that is harmonious, then let’s go deeper together. Let’s talk about ways that you can do that. Let’s talk about ways that we can break free, not from a place of even duty or obligation, not from a place of guilt or shame, not from a place of have to or should, or right or wrong, good or bad, but from a place of really filling ourselves up with true meaning and purpose for the betterment of ourselves and our society. So spread the message, my friend. I’ll see you when I’m back in March, or will you be gone?
“I will be gone.”
Okay. I love you, my friend. See you again. We’ll do two more questions. Sara?
“You already kinda touched on it, but I was going to ask about some of the biography you shared in the beginning, which is more the logistical changes. I wanted to hear a little more about the emotional and spiritual changes within you as you came closer to living in integrity. I guess you could end your answer with what it feels like this week.”
Well, the emotional and spiritual experience of removing money from my life? Sure. And this will be the last question that I’ll answer for those on the internet so Daniel can go home.
Well, I do feel like this is wrapped up into kinda what I’ve been talking a little bit about. But, I guess to put it simply, as far as the emotional and spiritual aspect of it: I could have continued the life that I was living and had a lot of meaning and purpose. Like, I did have a lot of meaning and purpose when I was living a life entirely based on money. But, what I realized was that I would always have somewhat of an emptiness in my soul if I know that I am living in a way that is destroying the possibility for others to live a whole life and was preventing them from being able to meet their basic needs, then I’m taking a spiritual sacrifice. I’m taking a hit to my soul. And there’s just this sense of emptiness, which I’m sure all of us have experienced some as like a pit in our stomach knowing that our actions are playing a role so much in the things that we don’t support.
You know, I still have my hypocrisies. I still have not removed myself from all the forms of destruction. But to a large degree, there are substantially less actions that I take on a given day that result in the unnecessary harm and suffering of other people and of the plants and animals that we share this home with. I still have a journey and I still have much more work to do. But in the number of ways that I’ve removed … basically, to put it simply, not being willing to meet my needs at the expense of others. I still am going to meet my needs: to belong, to be acknowledged, to be seen, to be heard, to be understood for meaning and purpose in life. I’m just not gonna do it at the burden of others, to the best of my ability. So the feeling that I get from that is that that doom and gloom, that helplessness and hopelessness sort of fades away and instead, it’s much more of a lightness, it’s much more of a wholeness and completeness. As I’ve embraced that … you know, as Fred Rogers would say – Mr. Rogers – he would say, “I like you just the way you are.” And that’s what I say to myself. I love myself just the way that I am. It’s the last thing that corporations want: is for us to just love ourselves the way we are. Because then we don’t need it. We don’t need all their bs anymore. So, of course, because I love myself just the way I am, I am existing in a lighter state, just less anxiety, more peace. I still experience anxiety, I still have chaos within me, but there’s so much more lightness and peace. Yeah, internal peace.
And the last little element that I’ll add to that is, as Ram Dass says, “We work on ourselves so that we can be of service to others.” And in this world today, in the privileged world, a lot of people will give you grief, like, “Who are you to work on yourself when there’s other people who don’t have their basic needs met?” Just like, “You’re a woo woo Hippie.” But, if we don’t establish a peace within, how can we ever really expect to help peace to exist outside of ourselves? If we can’t even control our own mind and our own emotions, how can we ever really expect to be helping others to exist in a state of peace and harmony? And so, I don’t know if that’s all [unintelligible] related, but that’s what comes alive in me with you asking that.
Sara and I walked a couple days of “the walk.” There you go. “The walk.” We did two or three days?
“Three.”
Three or four days of the walk together in Washington. So, I’m glad you’re here in Los Angeles. So on that note, I’m going to go ahead and ….
“Can we ask one more question?”
Sure.
“Oh, where’s the best place to dumpster dive?”
But. Where’s the best place to dumpster dive? To our Dear Friends online, can we all say “we love you” to our Dear Friends online?
“We love you!”
Articles referred to:
The Experiment in Non-Ownership – Robin Greenfield in Los Angeles
The Experiment in Non-Ownership – My “Why” and In-Depth Explanation
Non-Ownership in the Physical, Digital and Mental Realms
The Timeline of My Journey to Complete Non-Ownership
The above is a transcription of Truth Talk: On Living Without Money, which is part of Robin’s “Truth Talks” series during his experiment in non-ownership.
For the full series and depth to this practice visit: The Experiment in Non-Ownership – Robin Greenfield in Los Angeles.