By The Survivors Club Staff
July 23, 2009

Imagine never spending a penny on anything.  No phone bill.  No credit card to pay off.  No mortgage.  That's right, no wallet. No bank account.  No check book. 

Sometimes The Survivors Club comes upon stories that boggle the mind.  Here's one of them.  It's the story of Daniel Suelo, a 48-year-old former Peace Corps volunteer who lives in Utah and says he has survived for nearly a decade on zero dollars a day.

In 2000, Suelo decided to stop using money entirely.  "I've been totally without cents since Autumn of 2000 (except for 1 month in 2001)," he writes on his blog called Zerocurrency (created mainly on the free computer at the public library in Moab).  "I don't use or accept money or conscious barter - don't take food stamps or other government dole."

So how does he survive? 

"My life is easier (today) than it ever was when I had money," Suelo writes in a recent blog post.

He moves around a lot but his "home" is an hour's walk from Moab, Utah.  Although he lives in a cave in a canyon surrounded by waterfalls, he manages to maintain a (free) Website. "I know it is possible to live with zero money, abundantly," he writes.

How long does he plan to live this way? "I have taken no vows," he writes.  "I don't know what tomorrow holds, and I'm open to anything.  But the more I live this way, the more absurd it seems to go back to living in the prison of money.  I was unhappy under money and I'm happy free of it.  Why would I trade happiness for unhappiness again?  Why would I trade freedom for slavery?"

For more about Suelo (real last name: Shellabarger) and his non-cents life, we recommend this fascinating story by Christopher Ketcham in Details magazine.

For a 15-minute documentary film about Suelo made by Gordon Stevenson -- "Moneyless in Moab" -- click here.