While many aspire to go up in the world, some are forced to downsize. It could be a cut in salary, the loss of a job, or even a coping measure in the face of a rising cost of living. Whatever the reason, some people find themselves moving to a smaller house or to a cheaper area outside the city, doing whatever they can to get by.
However, there are some who take downsizing to a whole new level. Dan Price is one such person, shunning consumerism for the ‘simple life’ more than 20 years ago, he now lives in what he calls a “hobbit hole” in a field in Oregon, US.
Prior to his simple life, Price was married with two kids, paying off an expensive mortgage with his stressful job as a photojournalist. “I told myself, ‘buck up and pay the bills’. This is just the way normal life is,” Price said.
The Simple Life
The break-up of his marriage coincided with his reading of Harlan Hubbard’s Payne Hollow, a book about leading a primitive lifestyle. Price then took to living in a string of primitive dwellings, including a cabin, a flophouse, and a teepee, before he found the field that would become his home for the next 17 years.
Price leases the two-acre field for US$100 a year, and has built himself a work studio, a bath house and sauna, a garage shelter for his terra-bike, and his hobbit hole, out of natural materials found in his field, and recycled building materials from the surrounding area.
“By questioning every single thing – the refrigerator, the TV, the closet full of clothes, the furniture – it was so exciting to, one-by-one, remove those things and sit there and go, ‘What’s going to happen now? Am I going to, like, die?’” Price said.
His home cost just US$75 to make, and Price lives on US$5000 ($5298) a year. He doesn’t collect benefits or food stamps from the government, but earns what little he needs by doing odd jobs around the town, and publishing a zine about his simple lifestyle called Moonlight Chronicles.
“I like being able to do what I want to do. I don’t believe in houses or mortgages. Who in their right mind would spend their lifetime paying for a building they never get to spend time in because they are always working?” he said.
“People are so incredibly spoiled. My job is simply to live as pure and authentic as I can and make an example for people.”
But that’s not to say he rejects modernity entirely. His hobbit hole has electricity and internet access. He has an iPad and a MacBook Air, and pays US$53 per month for his mobile phone. He also spends the cold winter months not in his hobbit hole, but surfing in Hawaii.
The Intentional Poor
Price is obviously not the first to reject consumerism and materialism in favour of the simple life, he is just one of many who choose to live this way. The ‘intentional poor’ are generally looking for more meaning to their lives, something that goes beyond material possessions.
However, one main difference between the intentional poor and the ‘real’ poor is the intentional poor usually have a back-up plan. If things get really tough, they have something to fall back on. Such as Price’s photojournalism career – if it all goes wrong in his hobbit-style life, Price does have a money-maker to fall back on.
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