Customer Reviews

The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Since I work on the Internet, where every other post is about "creating wealth" and "overcoming your money blocks," this book was really refreshing. It's well-written and easy to read. The author manages to avoid seeming self-righteous; he focuses on what he did and even admits that, at times, he was a little too concerned with following his own rules. I especially liked the parts where he talks about finding genuine joy in what he was doing: eating delicious food, hiking and having time to think.

The obvious challenge is, we can't all do this. Someone has to write and publish the books. Some of us are simply less talented than others. Our modern life is set up for car travel, even if you hitch hike or get rides with friends.

Additionally, if we buy fewer products and services, we are displacing ordinary people from jobs. The only way to make this work on a large scale is to establish communities, as he discusses.

On the other hand, we can simplify our lives. I stopped watching television a long time ago (although I did go to a sports bar to watch the WNBA finals this year).
I don't drive a car, but to make this option feasible I live in a big city with a lot of other things that create a big carbon footprint.

Ultimately the book makes a powerful statement that's quite memorable. The author's matter-of-fact British style helps a lot. It will be interesting to see what he does next and whether the book can make a difference beyond a book and a few feature stories.

I had just finished reading, "Twelve by Twelve," by William Powers. It's his account of living in an off-grid structure that is twelve by twelve feet. I loved the book. The fact that Powers was able to make toilet composting and foraging dramatic and fascinating speaks a lot to his ability as a writer. The same can be said of Mark Boyle's book. After reading an on-line article about his experience and watching it pop up over and over again on my list of Amazon recommendations, I caved in and purchased the book. I was a bit hesitant. I mean, how many books about composting and tea made from nettles can one guy read?

I'm glad I bought the book. And, I'm glad I read the two books back-to-back. Two great takes on one fascinating life strategy. Where Powers left me feeling very spiritual and took great pains to avoid judgment, Boyle gave me a constant sense of urgency and felt compelled to keep reminding me of my carbon footprint and wasteful ways. The book could have been too preachy, but Boyle is able to make his points over and over without putting the reader on the defense. That's effective writing. I also enjoyed Boyle's side-bars from everything to making paper to websites that promote swapping items as apposed to making more of something. I recommend both books. And, I recommend reading them close together. It was a great reading experience.

Chris Bowen
Author of Our Kids: Building Relationships in the Classroom

Like other books in this genre of "A year doing x", Moneyless Man is part diary, part treatise and part self-help book. This one is a fascinating read. Mark Boyle appears to be a remarkable individual. Passionate to the point of fanaticism, yet touchingly sincere and exceptionally conscientious. In fact, I felt for him with his outsize conscience but then realized he has a terrific sense of fun and camaraderie; and in the course of his year without money he created some stunning achievements. He's very persuasive about the central issues: What is a life joyfully lived? What is the basis of human relationships, and humans' relationship with nature? These questions sound abstract, but Boyle manages to make them very earthy with his real-life experiment and his deeply honest tale.

Because Boyle was a business major at his university he has a good grasp of economics and a gift for making difficult concepts simple. Along with the wealth of information I gleaned from this book, finally understanding the credit crunch of 2008 was another benefit. Good reading. Important stuff.

I read this book based on the positive feedback it got and interest in the subject. Like another commenter I had read and enjoyed 12x12.

Moneyless Man offers many good insights on money, simplicity, living in community, and how the current system isn't working, but the book was mostly ideas with very little how-to. The book offers great statistics and insights regarding consumerism and community, and the takeaway message, which I agree with, is that if you have enough people supporting one another you can meet the needs of everyone.

I was a little disappointed by the lengthy descriptions of the author's plans to meet with reporters and would have preferred more detailed descriptions on the day to day activities through the seasons. I found the side-bars on making your own paper out of mushrooms, or building a rocket stove, or using a suction cup to handle menstrual cycles to be not useful as how-to guides, and in the case of the latter a little insulting. For most of the practical matters he defers to his friend Fergus (literally writing "For what to do here see Fergus") which I guess ties into the point of everyones skills coming together to create community and support eachother.

I did enjoy the book but would suggest a future revision having more detailed sidebars and more pictures (ex. sketches for the rocket stove, pictures of edible mushrooms, pictures of the living situation, etc.).

ere is the website of the community of people devoted to this way of life and helping others in need. A great resource [...]

One of the most inspirational stories I have read period. This book really forces you to examine your life and realize how wasteful we are as a society. This is not a book about creating an action plan and doing what the author has done, but rather you draw your inspiration from his story. A couple facts really stood out to me.
Water used to wash clothes in a machine: 25 gallons
Water used to wash clothes by hand: 3 gallons
Water used to flush toilet each day per person: 18 gallons
Water used in composting toilet: 0 gallons
During the twelve days of Christmas in 2008, 207,360 died of starvation while we stress about buying all these toys that most of our kids could care less about anyways.
50 million diapers are thrown away every single day in the US alone
Some quotes from the book that I really stood out to me.
Living the slow life is definitely more time-consuming, but I 'd rather have it consumed this way than in watching a reality TV show in the room we call 'living'.
None of us are teachers; we are all students, learning from each other's experience.

Reading this book things started to appear all over the place
A label on my tea that I have been drinking stated that by them not using a string and tag on their teabag they are saving 3.5 million pounds of waste entering landfills every year. This is crazy! This is more than mind blowing.
I just went through my refrigerator the other day and tossed out so much food that was a day or two past the expiration date. I was quite wasteful and this book made me feel bad about my decisions.

Great sites mentioned
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My Goals
Give my books away for free to people who don't want them. Maybe even set up an event where many people could get together and just swap them out and take what they want.
Try to not be as wasteful in my day to day activities. This book has opened my eyes to realize how wasteful of a society we are. I went through my typical eating routine and was so surprised at how much we throw away in waste products and in food.
To do more for people. I need to work on being a better citizen and person and help out more when I can. I have had chances recently that I simply overlooked or forgot about that could have made a change in a life of a person.
In closing, I really liked this book. It opened my eyes to taking a step back to appreciate what we have and all the great things available for free. It also was a great reminder about how great the human spirit can be. I liked the story in that it caused me to do some reflecting and thinking about my way of life. Great credit goes to him for living this way for a year and continuing to do so. I could not do it. It is not possible in my mind. However, I can definitely change my ways to help reduce the problems that I cause to the earth.

I had very high expectations of this book, and it lived up to most. I would recommend that anyone read it, not just eco freaks and environmentalists, it has the potential of challenging anyone's preconceptions and ideas. Boyle's experiment was and still is very controversial, but the main point is that he shows, by his experience and that of many others, that there are different ways of doing things, and definitely different ways to live fully satisfying, rich lives. Surely most people will find his lifestyle to be too extreme, but he can teach one or two lessons to just about anyone, or at least get most people to think a little bit about how they are living and what they can do not only to become more sustainable, but at the same time happier.

My only complaint is that it was over far too quickly. Even since I began I knew it was going to be very hard to put it down. I wish he had put as much attention to detail on every chapter as he did in the final one. It leaves you wanting to know more, for a whole year's experience he seems to go over ling periods of time in just a few pages, mentioning only general thoughts or recurring events.

Many times it has been said and sung: "money can't buy me love". This time Mark not only says it, but shows that living without money doesn't equal being poor (in any aspect), and in fact for some -because most will not even consider doing what he did- it can mean being even richer than with it.

He won't buy gasoline or a car, but he will accept a ride from someone who is buying and using gasoline for their car as he hitchhikes back home for Christmas. He won't buy tools for cutting trees, but he will borrow them to cut firewood as he lives through his first winter in a gifted, used fourteen foot camper trailer. He will accept handouts of things he would have bought the year previous his adventure, so going moneyless for a year is sounding to me more of someone who's more against global economics and the troubles it will produce on many levels (from unfair trade to carbon foot prints) than local economics where food and energy is produced locally and where it's impact (good or bad) is felt almost immediately.

He's learned that it takes a group of people to survive as he did better than on your own. That's one of the reasons he's such an oddity, I believe. When he ate moldy bread, a friend cared for him as he recovered. It was the kindness of strangers that carried him home for Christmas and back home to his camper.

The book reminds me more of someone living the hobo / squatter life for a year than someone trying to leave as small a carbon footprint as possible. It does have some good tips though on living the hobo / squatter lifestyle. It serves as a reminder that we are better off in groups during times when we are forced off the grid through disasters or extended periods of unemployment.

I like the book, but know better than to ever do something like this alone. And he's not going entirely moneyless either. He's using other people's money to get them to do things for him. That's why I gave it three stars, too. Two stars for the story and one star because I like the way he writes.

its a good book, a good read. i could never do what he did to go a WHOLE YEAR with no money, but he is very resourceful and makes you think...what if..

This is not a self-centered book nor a holier-than-thou book. Boyle is thoughtful, resourceful and straight-forward about his experiment and the impact it had on his life and those around him. I was struck while reading this about how fitness & money seem to have an inverse relationship: when we spend money to get fit (gyms) we rarely are, but in choosing not to spend money, Boyle earned fitness as a by-product.

The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living

I am following "Mark Boyle" and "The Moneyless Man" book on facebook and The Freeconomy Community Site [...] on Facebook for passed 2 years and very happy to participate in Moneyless world. The Book based on "Pay It Forward" concept where a person helps others unconditionally without money and just for the love of it.