coup d'tea

Lent Week 1- No Money!!!

The pancakes have settled; the superburger Alex made me at The Cavern Club is a distant memory, my credit and debit cards are gathering dust on a shelf; it can only mean one thing! Lent is here and my pledge must begin!

Week One is all about avoiding money; although the exchange of money for goods is an ancient tradition, it has to be noted that the issue of borrowing excessively is a truly 21st century phenomenon. Here’s some statistics (thanks to creditaction.org.uk)…

Total UK personal debt at the end of January 2011 totals £1,452,000,000,000 or nearly £1500 billion. That means that we as people owe more to credit agencies than the UK as a nation is in debt.
87 Houses were repossessed in the UK every day between October 1st and December 31st.
£530 million will be withdrawn from cash machines today.
The average amount of money saved today will be £2.73. That’s about 1/3 of what is taken from a cash machine.

Now, of course I’m fully aware that we need money in normal life, and that we’re always going to spend more than we save, but there seems to be some discrepancy in what we’re up to. I’ve made these mistakes plenty, so from now until Sunday night, no money will be spent!

Now, I could just live off other people, but the plan is to find other ways of getting the things I need. There will be no theft, but apart from that, everything’s up for grabs! Some of the plans involve working for food, hitch-hiking, bin-diving (freeganism!) and perhaps going hungry!

You can follow my progress as always on here or on twitter @joncutups

Any ideas/help/partnerships will be gratefully received! jon_shoe@hotmail.com

And, I’ll be delighted to hear what you’re up to aswell - there’s a website coming very very soon!

9 March 2011 ·