I’ve asked this before as well. At the top of the bbs page for this story it says it’s by boingboing and that’s usually how the paid content is credited. I’m guessing it’s because Altucher doesn’t have a bbs login and so he can’t be set as the author. Give me admin credentials and I can fix it for you. 
Yeah, and eating while traveling is expensive…
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Some do, to one degree or another. If they’re single or divorced and don’t care a lot about possessions, they can easily downsize or no-size and live a very comfortable nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle. A bank card may not weigh a lot physically but that possession carries a lot more heft than even tasteful and expensive black clothes.
The point of the critiques in the comments is that having a secure source of income or being independently wealthly is a critical piece of information to discuss when calling oneself “homeless” in America. It’s a variation on what Pratchett discusses as a preface to the famous Vimes “Boots” Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness:
The very very rich could afford to be poor. Sybil Ramkin lived in the kind of poverty that was only available to the very rich, a poverty approached from the other side. Women who were merely well-off saved up and bought dresses made of silk edged with lace and pearls, but Lady Ramkin was so rich she could afford to stomp around the place in rubber boots and a tweed skirt that had belonged to her mother. She was so rich she could afford to live on biscuits and cheese sandwiches. She was so rich she lived in three rooms in a thirty-four-roomed mansion; the rest of them were full of very expensive and very old furniture, covered in dust sheets.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
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He specifically says that he doesn’t have a credit card. He must use magic to get a place to stay.
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I read once that John Muir would carry a bag of dried bread chunks with him when he hiked, and for a week or two he’d just dip them in water to reconstitute them. Then there’s the Nature Boys of California who’d just go off into Topanga Canyon and eat figs and berries and roots. If you really pare down your lifestyle to nothing much at all, you can get by on very little. But it isn’t easy.
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Yeah but if you’re visiting a city… and don’t want to spend half your day foraging. I mean yeah, in the right places you could live off the land. But still. There is a reason we aren’t hunter/gatherers any more.
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Hmm… upon first perusal the idea of being unburdened by excessive material possessions sounds good, but as many other commentators have already espoused, such a lifestyle is easy to maintain when when one has the “safety net” of a sizable bank account.
And frankly, when I think of ‘minimal materialism’ as a way of life, I tend to think of people more like this:
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A hobo is a migratory worker.
A tramp is a migratory non-worker.
A bum is a stationary non-worker.
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I don’t think it’s an especially realistically-written series, but I see the appeal of the Jack Reacher character in Lee Child’s series of crime novels.
For the uninitiated, Reacher is a former US Army MP Major who left the service in his mid-30s and spends most of his time wandering the American landscape with literally nothing more than the clothes on his back. He lives frugally off his savings account, sleeping in cheap motels and buying a fresh set of thrift-shop clothing every few days so he never even has to do laundry. No job, no mortgage, no fixed schedule, nobody to support, and (largely because he’s improbably large and strong) no real worries about his own safety or security. Again, not the most realistic character ever written but in many ways the embodiment of “freedom.”
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Not necessarily. There are usually (non-gentrified) farmer’s markets, open-air markets, and lots of options when you travel besides restaurant meals. If you find places to stay that have small kitchens with basic utensils you can do very well (or, if travelling in developing countries, even better) on a normal American food budget, especially if you’re backstopped by a big and steady bank account.
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Freedom and joy, eh?! What guff. Poor person is suffering badly.
I’ve found over the years a mild correlation between the statement “I don’t care what you think about me” and the underlying emotion that they really do - lots. OK - not mild. Very strong, the correlation is.
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The magic might be a large, far-flung and very patient social support network, which is a privilege most homeless people don’t enjoy. Even so, the fairy dust on that can dissipate very quickly with even the most polite and considerate houseguest.
Debit cards are also magical, especially when your bank account doesn’t dip below $80k.
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Thank golly for Apple Pay.
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This is where the whole ‘live frugally’ thing falls apart.
Let’s say he’s staying in motels that are about $40/night, and getting by on about $10 a day in food. Twice a week or so he buys a new shirt and pants – let’s say that’s another $10. I’m assuming he’s buying underwear and socks, too, but even without that cost, he’s spending around $370 a week. I wouldn’t think that an ex-Army Major’s savings account would last long, spending $1500 a month at minimum.
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My very thought as well. I get he has money and money makes everything easier. We don’t mind the rich guy that opens our new favorite 5 star restaurant but a rich guy decides to not act like Trump and live simpler than most rich and middle class people and everyone grabs pitchforks.
I know an author/editor that did this after 30 years in the newspaper business. He dumped his life into a paper and when that industry went to shit they could barely recall his name. He realized all the late night and stress and blood he poured into that paper never acquired him any equity. He has no trust fund. He has no back up. But he started a little editing business and realized all of his work was remote. He didn’t need everything he had spent 50 years acquiring. He didn’t make him happy or help him succeed. He let it all go. He house sits for friends around the country. Sometimes he rents a little place for awhile. He lives from check to check but require little on a regular daily basis.
Does the author of the post have it easier than my buddy. Yes. Does that mean the identical advice I have heard from my friend is good advice but it it bad from the rich guy? It’s either of value to the listener or it isn’t.
One last thought. Five years ago I would have reacted different to this post. I would have been a little jealous and I would have pointed out practical “flaws” in his plan to explain why I wasn’t living free. Why I spent my time in debt, in traffic, in a unfulfilling job. Because any deviation was impossible. Now I am 46 and the stuff I worked so hard for. Shrug. Just a bunch of plastic junk stored in a building costing me decades of debt. And so his words have a different impact on me. Yes, I have financial limits that he doesn’t but my buddy the editor shows you don’t have to be a rich ex-hedge fund manager if you are thoughtful about what you need and flexible and fluid in how he lives his life from month to month.
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In the series there’s some explanation there:
- He’d been in the Army since 18 and had barely had any expenses during all that time, so the balance he started with was pretty substantial
- He stays in the rattiest, cheapest accommodations he can find, sometimes even sleeping outside (or with the various hotties he hooks up with)
- He’s not above pocketing money or salable goods from any thugs foolish enough to tangle with him
- About three books into the series he does eventually settle down enough to work a day job as a laborer and a night job as a strip club bouncer to build his savings back up a bit. Then at the end of that story he (spoiler) inherits a house from his former CO, which he (spoiler) later sells to fund his nomadic lifestyle.
In any case Reacher is written less as a realistic character than as the embodiment of the freedom-loving, ass-kickin’ American dream (of not having any real responsibilities).
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Which means if you do the reverse of spending (throwing 99.9% of your things away), you are practically the opposite of average.
Um, that’s not the reverse of spending. And that pretty much just sums it all up right there, doesn’t it?
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The freedom and joy were within you all along.
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Yeah, but sometimes it’s hard to find it under all those possessions.
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The reaction is happening because (unlike your story about your friend) he never discusses his means of support in the initial interview and dances around it in the follow-up. It takes steady and reliable if not excessive resources (financial and/or social capital) to be able to decide you DGAF and go “minimalist.” But if he’s going to then brag about adopting these worthy goals of freedom and joy as if it’s the kind choice anyone can make, he can’t just leave out a critical part of the story.
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