Everyday life of a modern hobbit
Be that as it may, in this diverse world, you can choose a lifestyle to your liking. Someone likes to live in a noisy city, someone dedicates their existence to making money, someone constantly travels ... But Dan Price chose the everyday life of a hobbit for himself: abandoning the joys of consumerism, he carelessly lives in a makeshift hobbit hole and spends only five thousand dollars a year.
(Total 11 photos)
1. Squatting down, Dan Price climbs into his house - the "Hobbit Hole", as he calls it. Nora - because the house was made by Dan himself inside the hill, using wood waste. The Hobbit lives in the town of Joseph, in northeastern Oregon. The whole building cost only $75, most of which was spent on staples and construction filler. Inside is a room 1.3 meters high with a sloping ceiling. “All I need is food, clothes and a roof over my head,” says Price, who lives on just $5,000 a year. Such a way of life, according to Dan himself, saved him from constant worries about money and work.
2. Price cooks the simplest food: oats, nuts and grains. For lack of a refrigerator, there is no milk in the house, so everything is prepared on the water. From cutlery: one spoon, one fork and one knife.
3. One of the few ways to earn money is the Moonlight Chronicles picture magazine, which tells about his adventures over the past 20 years. More than a modest income comes from placed advertising. Dan spends money mainly on traveler's equipment: tents and clothes.
4. As you may have guessed, there is no washing machine or any other household appliances familiar to us in Price's Hobbit Hole. Dan washes his clothes in a nearby river and dries them on a line. “All you dream about being rich is to create a paradise for yourself. The house I live in now is my paradise, the paradise that wealthy people dream of.”
5. The rent for the land is literally $100 a year.
6. Every year, Dan Price cuts down one cotton tree and plants one evergreen instead. "Evergreen trees don't break as easily in a storm as cotton trees," Dan says. Dan is reluctant to spend money on a new necessary tool. Therefore, only when the old one is worn out to the limit, he buys a “new” one at flea markets or sites with ads.
7. In the life of Price there is a place for sports. For his daily workouts, Dan made himself a barbell out of leftover concrete. He has not had health insurance for the past few years. Three years ago, he received a check for $3,000 after an operation to remove kidney stones. “And I said, dude, I don’t have that kind of money! How can I pay off debt? Government agencies love it when customers are willing to pay their bills.”
8. Price doesn't have a car. He rides a tricycle recumbent or simply walks. As Dan himself says, this saves him money and allows him to stay in shape. In 2001, he received a bicycle from another sponsor and rode 7240 kilometers on it. The journey from Oregon to Key West in Florida is described in the Chronicle.
9. For 6 dollars our hero buys a file for the chain of his three-wheeled friend. “People love to shop, it’s the feeling of euphoria from the purchased item. I'm the opposite. I always get depressed when I have to buy something.”
10. Before Dan built his Hobbit Hole, he lived in a wigwam. The photo is featured in an exhibition of photographs dedicated to the non-Persian Indian people. It shows Price helping to dismantle the wigwam. “Before the colonists came here, there was no piece of concrete, no telephone poles, no fences, no wire, no roads. And without all this, they lived here happily in harmony with nature. This thought completely changed my view of life. Understand, I'm not going the way everyone else is going. I'm going in the opposite direction."
11. Once upon a time in difficult times, Dan saw an ad in the newspaper for the vacancy of a cemetery caretaker. “For me, this work has become a kind of revelation. Taking care of a cemetery is like being a monk. I like doing it. I was so eager to get this job that I started doing it even before I was officially hired. I've been working here for 2 years, earning $475 a month. And in these two years, I have developed some special connection with this place.”