Sharon Brodie clearly remembers her first Christmas with his good friend Jo Nemeth. It was in 2016 and also her first Christmas without her husband, Monty, who died suddenly a month earlier.
“I didn’t even want to be alive,” said Brodie from his home to Lismore, in northern Southern New Wales. “I certainly didn’t want to go to stores or buy gifts or make anything. But Jo had come to stay with us (Brodie and his two teenagers) to help, and the day before Christmas, I told him that my gift was that we could do dive with garbage dumpster, which I had Never done before – and we did it that night.
“It was a revelation. The things we have found, have just thrown through local businesses. We brought good food to the house for a Christmas party and all these beautiful flowers that we led in the house and they felt like a gift from Monty, a gift that I would never have received without jo. It was my Introduction to Life without Money of Jo. »»
A year earlier, in 2015, Nemeth had left her community development job, given the last of her money to her 18 -year -old daughter, Amy and closed her bank account.
“I was 46 years old, I was a good job and a partner I loved, but I was deeply unhappy,” explains Nemeth.
“I felt this growing despair about the economic system in which we live and the harm I was doing to other people and the planet, even when I tried to buy ethically, when I lived in this world of Privileges. “
His “bulb moment” came when his parents, retired farmers are used to living frugal, gave him a book on people with alternative lifestyles. “When I read what this guy chose to live without money, I thought:” Oh my God, I have to do that! “”
Shortly after, Nemeth came across man without money: a year of freeconomic life by Mark Boylewho lived without money for three years in Ireland. After his example, the first thing Nemeth did was to write a list of his needs.
“It turned out to be a short list because I already had things like pots and pots and a toothbrush, and I discovered that I really didn’t need a lot to be easy. Then I just started checking things, determining how I could meet my needs without having negative impacts. »»
Nemeth, now 56 years old and single, does not have his own house or no property. It also does not receive social benefits or has no savings, a generous benefactor or a secret hiding place in emergency.
At first, food was his greatest concern and the easiest need to satisfy. “I did not do a lot of garbage diving, I didn’t need it,” she said, because she herself cultivated food and friends would give her waste. “People often have things that they will never use in the back of their cupboards.”
And whenever her birthday or Christmas was riding, she asked her parents, say, a 5 kg of rice bag or a packet of powdered milk.
She quickly started to draw more deeply from the “gift economy”, giving without expecting anything in return, receiving without any sense of the obligation.
“This second part took a while to get used to it,” she says. “It’s very different to barter or trading, which means thinking in a monetary and transactional way: I will give you this if you give me this. At first, people said, “Come and do this for me and I will give you this or that in return. And I would say, “No, I will just come to do the work and you have nothing to give me”. “”
It is paid unexpectedly. Nemeth is perfectly aware that it is in the The fastest growth demographic Risk of homelessness in Australia. However, paradoxically, she never worried about where she will live.
“I actually feel more safe than when I earned money,” she says, “because throughout human history, real security has always come to live in the community and I have The time now to build this “social currency”. To help people, take care of sick friends or their children, help yourself in their gardens. This is one of the great advantages of life without money. »»
During the first three years, Nemeth lived on a friend’s farm, where she built a small cabin from building materials thrown before doing houseter and living off for a year in a “small blue wagon In the backyard of another friend. Then, in 2018, she moved full time in the Brodie house; It is now a multi -generational house that includes Brodie’s new partner and one of her sons, Nemeth’s daughter, Amy, Amy’s husband and their three grandchildren.
Instead of paying the rent, Nemeth cooked, cleanses, manages the vegetarian garden and manufactures items such as soap, washing powder and fermented foods to save money in cleaning and reduce its environmental footprint. And she couldn’t be happier.
“I love being at home and I like the challenge of meeting our needs without money – it’s like a game.”
“If you have developed the dollar value of everything that mom does in this house, she probably contributes much more than rent,” explains Amy. “But living with her now, I can see that her life is much more than using money. I really notice the impact of things we do and buy.
“Like, you can buy something from Kmart which is cheaper than buying it in an operating operator, and I understand that people just want to spend less money, but where is this money going?”
Brodie agrees on Nemeth’s positive impact on cleaning. “We live much more simply than most people, but it seems very abundant at the same time. We have no chocolate very often now, for example, but when we have – as we did recently when a local store has closed and gave all its stock – it looks like such a privilege, which is really. “”
Nemeth is quick to say that she is not “anti-money”, so when she realized that she was going to need dental work this year, she found a way to pay for that that aligns with its values. “I had planned to teach people how to make tofu or scrap vinegar, share my skills, then a friend suggested that I set up a GoFundme campaign to create a dental fund and offer practical lessons as rewards , that’s what I’m going to do. “”
Nor is she anti-Technology either. Nemeth has a phone (a gift from a friend) but no telephone plan or SIM card; She makes calls and sends messages and emails via the household WiFi network. She also uses Facebook – mainly to browse the purchasing groups not to buy anything and to promote Lismore Community Garden, where she volunteers. But she does not have a car: she moves by bike, walks and hitchhikes.
However, she wants to get back to the point, so she currently uses recycled building materials to repair a cubby in the backyard where she plans to sleep and spend her evenings to read in Candlelight. “It’s very small, just enough for a single bed and a standing room. There is no electricity or running water.
“But I want to feel more connected to reality, birds and stars and sun and rain. I feel really disconnected to live in a large house. We just had a full moon and I almost missed it! »»
Brodie says she will miss Nemeth to be in the house all the time, but she could not be more favorable to the choices of her friend. “I see Jo as a pioneer,” she says. “She adopted this radical position to underline what is going on in the world and I really believe that the moment will come when we will all have to live more like it does: more simply, eat food cultivated locally, do things ourselves and help each other. “”
This article was modified on February 3, 2025. A previous version said that Mark Boyle lived in the United Kingdom rather than Ireland.
To learn more about the life without money of Jo Nemeth, see it Jolowimppact Blog.