Happy 69 Year Old Lady Has Not Used Money For 15 Years
Beautiful article of a lady who certainly does not look 69 years old at all!
(By odditycentral.com)
Heidemarie
Schwermer, a 69-year-old woman from Germany, gave up using money 15
years ago and says she’s been much happier ever since.
Heidemarie’s
incredible story began 22 years ago, when she, a middle-aged secondary
school teacher emerging from a difficult marriage, took her two
children and moved to the city of Dortmund, in Germany’s Ruhr area. One
of the first things she noticed was the large number of homeless
people, and this shocked her so much that she decided to actually do
something about it. She had always believed the homeless didn’t need
actual money to be accepted back into society, only a chance to empower
themselves by making themselves useful, so she opened a Tauschring (swap shop), called “Gib und Nimm” (Give and Take).
Her
small venture was a place where anyone could trade stuff and skills
for other things and skills they needed, without a single coin or
banknote changing hands. Old clothes could be traded in return for
kitchen appliances, and car service rendered in return for plumbing
services, and so on. The idea didn’t really attract many of Dortmund’s
homeless, because, as some of them told her to her face, they didn’t
feel an educated middle-class woman could relate to their situation.
Instead, her small shop was assaulted by many of the city’s unemployed
and retired folk eager to trade their skills and old stuff for something
they needed. Heidemarie Schwermer’s Tauschring eventually became
somewhat of a phenomenon in Dortmund and even prompted its creator to
ask herself some questions about the life she was living.
She
started to realize she was living with a lot of stuff she didn’t
really need and initially decided not to buy anything else without
giving something away. Then she realized how unhappy she was with her
work and made the connection between this feeling and the physical
symptoms (backache and constant illness) she was feeling, so she decided
to take up other jobs. She began washing dishes for 10 Deutchmarks an
hour, and despite many were telling her things like “You went to
university, you studied to do this?”, she felt good about herself, and
didn’t feel like she should be valued more because of her studies than
someone working in a kitchen. By 1995, the Tauschring had changed her
life so much that she was spending virtually nothing, as everything she
needed seemed to find its way into her life.
So
in 1996. she took the biggest decision of her life: to live without
money. Her children had moved out so she sold the apartment in Dortmund
and decided to live nomadically, trading things and services for
everything she needed. It was supposed to be a 12-month experiment, but
found herself loving it so much that she just couldn’t give it up. 15
years later, she still lives according to the principles of Gib und
Nimm, doing various chores for accommodation in the houses of various
members of the Tauschring, and loving every minute of it. Schwermer has
written two books about her experience of living without money and
asked her publisher to give the money to charity so it can make many
people happy instead of just one. She’s just happy being healthier and
better off than ever before.
All
of her belongings fit into a single-back suitcase and a rucksack, she
has emergency savings of €200 and any other money she comes across, she
gives away. Heidemarie doesn’t even have health insurance as
she didn’t want to be accused of stealing from the state, and says she
relies on the power of self-healing whenever she gets a little sick.
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