Living on $5000 a year, on purpose: Meet America’s ‘intentional poor’

Dan Price was once a successful but stressed out family man in Kentucky but left it all behind twenty years ago to live underground in the Oregon woods.

Simple life: Dan Price left his workaday family life in Kentucky behind and has lived in the woods of Oregon ever since

He’s the Hobbit hole man who walked away from the 9-to-5 life, dug himself a house under a horse pasture and he has never looked back.

‘When you get rid of things and you’re willing to have less, you’re given a gift of more,’ said Price as he sat in his 8-foot abode.

Price once worked as a photojournalist to help support his wife and two young kids and to pay the family mortgage.

‘I told myself, “buck up and pay the bills,”’ Price recalled to NBC News. ‘This is just the way normal life is.’

Then, at 33, Price read a 1974 book called Payne Hollow by Harlan Hubbard, which espouses a rejection of modernity in favor of a primitive lifestyle.

Price decided to model his own life after Hubbard’s. While Hubbard found his peace on the shores of the Ohio River, Price headed west to his home state of Oregon.

He lived in a string of rustic dwellings—a cabin, an old flophouse, even a tepee—before building the tree-covered Hobbit hole out of mostly found materials in Joseph, Oregon.

Now, twenty years after seeing the light in simple living, Price is still in his 8-foot dwelling in the ground.

In the carpeted, wood-lined circular room, Price has everything he needs. There appears to be electricity in his hobbit hole and a hot plate for cooking. Though it barely seems to fit, a cushion rolls out for sleeping.

While he prefers his surroundings relatively bare, Price’s life isn’t without its modern comforts: he has both an iPad and a MacBook Air. He also pays $53 per month for his cell phone.

‘I like being able to do what I want to do,’ Price told NBC.

Untethered by the workaday lifestyle, Price is free to do just that.

Every winter, when life on the horse pasture becomes too cold, Price heads to Hawaii where he surfs each year from November to April.

Price supports himself with a zine about his simple lifestyle called Moonlight Chronicles and by working odd jobs.

He also penned a book called My Tiny House under name Hoboartist.

One around $5000 a year, Price is able to pay the $100 per year rent on his two acres of land, provide himself with necessities, and presumably the travel costs to Hawaii.

‘I don’t believe in houses or mortgages,’ he told NBC. ‘Who in their right mind would spend their lifetime paying for a building they never get to spend time in because they are always working?’

@MailOnline