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Living on $5,000 a year, on purpose

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  • Living on $5,000 a year, on purpose

    More than two decades ago, then-33-year-old Dan Price had a wife, two small children, a high-interest mortgage, and a stressful job as a photojournalist in Kentucky. He worried daily about money and the workaday grind.

    “I told myself, ‘buck up and pay the bills,’” said Price. “This is just the way normal life is.”

    Then he learned about what he calls “the simple life.” Price read Payne Hollow, a 1974 book about author Harlan Hubbard’s rejection of modernity and his primitive home on the shore of the Ohio River. Price’s marriage dissolved soon after, and the whole family moved to Oregon, where he grew up. Price opted to move alone into a tiny cabin in the woods, then a flophouse, then a teepee, and finally into an underground “Hobbit hole” on a horse pasture near a river, where he still lives. During the winter, he decamps to Hawaii to surf and avoid the harsh weather...



  • #2
    So, did he not pay child support? I'm assuming his kids didn't come stay with him either.

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    • #3
      I wonder who will pick up the tab when his old bones can't handle that type of living anymore
      "Those who can't remember the past are condemmed to repeat it".- George Santayana.

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      • #4
        $5,000/year wouldn't cover my property taxes.
        Steve

        * Despite the high cost of living, it remains very popular.
        * Why should I pay for my daughter's education when she already knows everything?
        * There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going.

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        • #5
          It wouldn't cover my child support obligations, that's for sure.

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          • #6
            Jacob of Early Retirement Extreme fame lives on 7k per year.

            I like the idea of consuming less, so requiring less money. I am trying to move towards that. I doubt I would ever aim to live on 5k annually, though.

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            • #7
              This guy has an internet presence, so you can find out more about him if you are curious. I only glimpsed at enough to see that the OP's linked article might have the chronology of Dan Price's story wrong. Not sure, but I think his kids might have been old enough to have their own kids at the time he divorced.

              It looks like part of his reason for living so simply in Oregon is so that he can afford to spend months per year surfing in Hawaii.
              "There is some ontological doubt as to whether it may even be possible in principle to nail down these things in the universe we're given to study." --text msg from my kid

              "It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." --Frederick Douglass

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              • #8
                Good for him if it works for him, but I don't think that I'd want to live in a hole in the ground.
                Brian

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                • #9
                  Guess kids don't come stay with him? So he left behind parental obligations?

                  Jacob of ERE went back to work. Basically he took some time off. I also think he didn't do healthcare during the lean years right? Medical premiums are the real killer in today's budget.
                  LivingAlmostLarge Blog

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