Then give us a title on one of these books.

Because if you aren't working for yourself and you aren't employed anywhere, and you don't have a substantial life savings or some kind of insurance payout, then you're living on government checks and hand-outs. There's no getting around that.

You can go the Mathew Lesko route and apply for government grants and all that stuff, but in the end you're still living off of government money aka other people's money. Because working people pay taxes in order for that money to exist. So if no one was working, that money wouldn't exist.

I've read plenty of articles about people who live "debt free" and "moneyless lives" and every time those articles eventually boil down to: dumpster diving, swap meets, soup kitchens, sharing a 1 bedroom house with 5 to 10 other "friends" etc. That is not my idea of living comfortably. I'm not eating out of someone's trash or wearing clothes someone else tossed out, and I don't believe in government hand-outs for able-bodied people who are just too lazy to get a real job. Government assistance should only be for people who actually need it.

There are plenty of ways to work for yourself without having a boss breathing down your neck. It's not easy but it's manageable. I've been working for myself for nearly 6 years now, doing everything from painting office buildings to light construction, to cleaning yards, to making art and building content for people in the Poser community and other software. You're not really working for yourself though, you're doing a job someone is paying you for, which makes them your boss, at least for as long as it takes to complete the job. There are also a number of freelancer websites that list jobs you can bid on and build up a client base that way. Lots of people live pretty decently just from jobs they get from freelance sites. But it still requires working as much as possible and making enough to cover necessities like insurance, vehicle, rent, etc. I was reading an article a couple weeks ago about a married couple who spend their life traveling the world together and 100% of their income comes from working off of freelance sites writing software and blog articles. Every few weeks they're in a different city. Of course it said nothing about what they're doing to save for retirement, which is not cheap, but I guess they're young enough not to feel like they have to worry about that right now. Traveling isn't cheap though.

The other option is building a small group of like-minded folks who work together to meet everyone's basic needs - growing food, building houses, etc., to establish a self-sustaining community. But even with that you have to have some way to pay taxes on the land you're using, which means one person or the entire group has to produce something that pays that bill every year. And certain things that such a piece of land would require also require money. Installing solar panels on your house for example - illegal to do on your own in most areas, and it is not cheap to have it done. We're talking many thousands. And they tend to break pretty easily, which is another bill. You can't legally dig your own well anywhere in the US unless you're licensed to do so. And as I mentioned in a previous post, it is illegal to collect rain water in a lot of areas, especially in drought-prone areas like out west. Even in FL - probably the wettest state in the country - they have water restrictions, where you can't water your lawn on certain days, etc. 

You could move to some place like Belize or some island country where the cost of living is practically pennies a day, but those places are pretty much a Katrina away from being wiped off the map, so no thanks. I'll keep my happy white ass living right here being a debt slave for my AC and cable internet. And if anything major happens I'll just high-tail it back up to the Appalachian mountains and live off the land. That's where I was born anyway and if land prices weren't so high I'd still be there.