How can you afford this?

In July of 2022 I left the best job I’ve ever had — protecting forests on New Zealand’s south island — and decided I’d saved enough money to not work for five years or so. Nearly two and a half years have passed since then.

In Slovenia, last year, I met a German couple with their two and a half children, touring the country in a two and a half litre rental car, on one of their two and a half annual holidays from the jobs they have to work in order to pay for the kids, the cars, and the holidays.

We crossed paths at a water fountain in the teeny park of a tiny town in front of a dinky little Catholic church that was famous for some reason or other. It wasn’t much to look at. Dad was disappointed because the children were disappointed. The children were disappointed because the church was boring, the town was empty, the driving was endless, mum had a headache, and dad seemed to have a hundred and one questions for the strange man leaning against the water fountain.

As often as not, when people ask me what I’m doing I pretend I’m on a short hiking trip, that way I can avoid the same half dozen questions that everybody asks. But this dad snuck past my defences using a strategy of bamboozlement. First he asked if the water from the fountain was safe to drink — as if I was likely to know — busy as I was drinking it. Then he was peppering me with questions about my torn clothes, my pack, where I was going, and the next thing I knew he’d gathered that I’d walked from England. His reaction was unforgettable.

I’m used to people’s confusion, their shock, their doubt or excitement, but his reaction was something more like horror. Horror not at what I was doing, but at what he was doing. Unexpectedly, semi-trance like, he began to describe his life, his work, his marriage, his daily routine. I don’t remember all that he said, but I vividly remember when he looked squarely at me and said “I just live a normal life”. I remember it because he said it like an apology.

He went back inside the church for a little while, and when he returned he seemed to have recovered a bit. “How can you afford this?” was his last question. I don’t remember what I said, but something tells me that he does.

I get asked about money a lot. After where do you sleep? and are you crazy? it’s probably the most common question people ask. And I get it. People want to know how I can afford to travel for years without working. More specifically, they want to know the secret.

But there is no secret. It’s like when you’re trying to lose weight. You know the drill. Eat less. Preferably eat healthier too, but all that really matters is that you eat less. The Atkins diet, Keto, Paleo, low-fat, low-carb, high-fat, high-carb, juicing, intermittent fasting (my favourite), the potato diet, THE ICE-CREAM DIET (everybody’s favourite). These all exist in the hopes that one of them will connect our mushy little brains with the very simple fact that if you consume fewer calories than you burn — EVEN IF ALL YOU EAT IS ICE-CREAM — you will lose weight!

There are no secrets to losing weight, and there are no secrets to living on less money either — though any number of people will cheerfully promise you otherwise, for a fee. Even if there were secrets, I spend more each year than at least 5 billion other people on this earth¹, so you shouldn’t be listening to me, I’m an amateur.

My relationship with money has evolved from my abiding desire to live an interesting, meaningful life without wasting my energy worrying about where to sleep, whether I’m crazy or not, or about money — especially that. But not worrying about money is not the same as not thinking about money.

Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves.
— William Lowndes in a letter by Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, 1747

If I have one superpower — one ‘secret’ weapon when it comes to money — it’s that I keep a ledger².

By committing to the small, regular effort necessary to keep track of things, and keeping my relationship with money in proportion to a larger purpose, I’m freed from those concerns, freed to pursue what is most interesting to me. And that is much more important than how much I spend.

The arbitrary window of spending that I aim for — between five and eight thousand euros per year — isn’t based on anything more than a vague notion of “enough to not stress, little enough to surface interesting problems to solve, to encourage exploration, and not require me to work more than I feel like”. It’s specific to me and my circumstances in that I’m comfortable lifting food from bins, sleeping rough, only rarely eating out, buying almost everything second hand, scavenging a lot etc. But it also accommodates the fact that I’m drawn like a magpie to a particular set of unnecessary toys.

Despite buying it all second-hand; cameras, lenses, computers, bicycles, speakers make up over a quarter of my expenses. Over the last five years I have spent €4,316.28 on photography equipment alone. In that same time period I have spent €4,808.79 on places to sleep³. So by one way of seeing, photography is approximately as important to me as sleep is, or at least as beds are.

Maybe that does almost qualify as a secret for living on less. Don’t pay rent. Between October 7th 2020 and February 22nd 2021, Rose and I carried our home — a tent — on our backs as we walked the length of a country together. After that I drove a tractor on apple orchards on the south island and slept in a workers shack. Since leaving Tasman Bay in December 2021, I haven’t paid for a roof over my head for more than a few nights at a time. For a year after that, Mizuki and I lived on Isobel’s land in New Zealand, built a cabin to call home, offering our time in lieu of money. Then it was back to my other home for the first time in five and half years, a couple months with family, visiting friends, then striking out on this walk, every night under the stars again. Last winter another work exchange, Albania, the house in the village. This winter I’m in Vancouver, laying my head on a cushy futon on the floor of Kyle and Avvai’s apartment.

So the question isn’t How can I afford to live like this?, it’s Why would I live any other way? Everything flows from that.

I live like this because I like it, I love it⁴. There are moments where it sucks — that’s probably true for you too, however you live — but I wouldn’t change it. There are sacrifices yes, but there aren’t really any secrets. We wander through life making choices and — for us privileged few⁵ — most of those choices fall along a fairly simple continuum. Life can be comfortable, predictable, safe; or life can be interesting.

I’d say one of the most common failures of able people is a lack of nerve. They’ll play safe games […], you have to play a less safe game, if it’s going to be interesting. It’s not predictable that it’ll go well.
— George Stigler, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, 1996

2024-10-16 * Supermarket  ; Snacks, Bim, Istanbul
    Assets:UK:Starling:Current                           -1.23 GBP @ 44.308943 TRY
    Expenses:Consumables:Groceries                       54.50 TRY

2024-10-16 * Bus  ; bus from Kris' back to Kadıköy
    Assets:Cash                                         -20.00 TRY
    Expenses:Transport:Buses                             20.00 TRY

2024-10-17 * Hush Hostel, Istanbul
    Assets:UK:Starling:Current                          -16.43 GBP @ 43.822276 TRY
    Expenses:Accommodation:Hostel                       720.00 TRY

2024-10-17 * Bakery  ; best Borek in Istanbul, as recommended by Kyle
    Assets:Cash                                         -95.00 TRY
    Expenses:Consumables:Eating Out                      95.00 TRY

2024-10-17 * Restaurant  ; Dinner with Kyle and Avvai in Istanbul
    Assets:Cash                                        -150.00 TRY
    Expenses:Consumables:Eating Out                     150.00 TRY

If reality isn’t enough to keep you interested and you find yourself constantly inventing a fake reality for yourself, you need to rethink your life.
— Zeke in Jason Pargin, I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, 2024, St. Martin’s Press, Ch. Day 1, p. 77