Most of us would find it hard to get through a weekend without spending. Bus fares, groceries, phone credit and rent are so ingrained into daily life that to imagine living without them seems like a stunt. But in the 1990s a psychotherapist in the German city of Dortmund decided to test the idea properly. In 1996, Heidemarie Schwermer gave away most of her belongings, gave up her flat and stopped using money, initially for a single year. The year went by, and she carried on. Her story is told in Living Without Money , a 2010 documentary by Norwegian filmmaker Line Halvorsen. By then, Schwermer was 68 and 14 years into the experiment, though the film says she lived almost without money, not entirely without it.
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