Paying My Rent Through Service

When I tell people that I attempted to live for a year without the use of money, some ask me how. It’s hard to pinpoint any one answer to that, considering the variety of ways that life provided throughout the 365 days, but ultimately, the how was simple faith that life would show up for me if I showed up for it. And although I’m back to using money, I still appreciate it when life provides beyond the Federal Reserve Bank.

Part of my vision when I was practicing fiduciary celibacy was the hope to merely be appreciated for who I am as a human and not have to pay anyone in order to survive in this realm. During that year, I would often stay in houses that were being renovated in exchange for labor and security, I would, and have since, served as a pet-sitter, and for the last couple of years, after motorcycling to all 48 contiguous states and staying with over 50 couchsurfing hosts, I’ve been a house-sitter. This weekend, another opportunity presented itself.

You see, in my role as a house-sitter, I’m usually only there when the family is not, and when they come back to town, they like to stay there as a family so I have to find some other place to stay for awhile. Last year, they came back for a few months, and after putting it out on Facebook that I was looking for a place to rent, one of my friends reached out to me to tell me about a converted studio in her backyard. Although she was asking 1200$ a month, she also needed some work around the homestead, and my lending a hand from time to time dropped the rent down to 1000$ a month.

For this weekend, I needed a place for four nights while the homeowners are in town, and I reached out to my friend to see about renting the studio for the weekend. She said I could rent it for 50$ a night, but what she really needed was yardwork. Grass grows like crazy during the summer in Florida, and the backyard had been completely overtaken in the few months I’ve been house-sitting on the bay. She offered to let me stay in the studio in exchange for help getting control of the yard.

Last week, I was telling someone that I’d love to mow yards for one day of the month. There is something truly satisfying about mowing a yard, from the smell of freshly cut grass to the satisfaction of participating in transformation and seeing it happen in real time, and although I don’t want to make a career of it, or even have to do it every week, it would be kind of fun once in awhile. Anyway, for this particular task, all I had to work with was an electric weed-eater, but that was even more satisfying than mowing.

At 7am on Saturday morning, I was literally waiting for the sun to rise so I could get to work. I wanted to finish before it got too hot, and I was really excited about getting the transformation underway. Not only was I able to chop down a garbage can’s worth of weeds, I was also able to uncover the walkways and patio I’d set up when I’d stayed here in the Spring.

I was finished by 10am, and considering my 55th birthday recently upped my asking pay rate to 55$ an hour, that works out to just about what she wanted in rent if money was her most immediate need. But as it is, a much bigger need was fulfilled, she can walk in her yard again, I have a place to stay, and my bank account was untouched by the exchange of energy, leaving that money still available for other things. I was hoping to help people create similar exchanges by helping to establish a time bank in Sarasota the year after my cashless lifestyle experiment, but it may have been a bit ahead of its time for the people of Sarasota.

Nevertheless. I do think time banking is something we should revisit moving forward. The basic gist of time banking is that it offers people a platform onto with they can post the skills they have to share and the needs they need filled. When a person finds a skill they can share to fulfill a need, the time they invest in the project renders them a time dollar, which can then be exchanged with other members of the time bank to get other needs met. It’s worked fairly well in other communities, but it didn’t quite take off in Sarasota, however, my skillset didn’t really include executive administration so that could have been part of it as well.

Anyway, I still appreciate it when life provides me a way to serve and be served without paying interest to a third party. There is something so profoundly human about sharing the true abundance of our lives by merely sharing what we’re capable of in order to meet simple needs for others. And I really like not having to pay rent.

Share