In the fall of 2000, Daniel Suelo approached a phone booth with his life savings in hand. Without making a phone call, he left all the money he had in the phonebook and started a new life, a life without money.

Monday, April 2 Daniel Suelo and Mark Sundeen will be in Grand Junction at the Mesa County Libraries Central Library. The program starts at 6:30 p.m. and there is no charge.

For Suelo, everything changed. He no longer ate at restaurants or drove a car. As he led a life without money, many thought it would be nearly impossible for Suelo to accomplish, but Mark Sundeen, author of “The Man Who Quit Money,” disagreed.

“He’s not a survivalist, or a hermit: he just doesn’t use money,” Sundeen said. “He gets most of his food from dumpsters, and as I can attest, it’s perfectly fine food that has been thrown away because it reached a somewhat arbitrary expiration date.”

Life changed for Suelo, but he didn’t remove himself from society, just the economy. Suelo has a Facebook and a blog that he maintains often from the public library’s computers. According to Sundeen, Suelo is a very social person and keeps in contact with his friends all over the world quite well.

After a trip to Thailand and India, where Suelo heard the Dalai Lama speak, he returned to the U.S. determined to become a sadhu. A sadhu is someone who wanders India without money or possessions.

“A true test of faith would be to return to one of the most materialistic, money-worshipping nations on earth to return to the authentically profound principles of spirituality hidden beneath our own religion of hypocrisy, and be a sadhu there.” Suelo said.

Sundeen describes that since this day twelve years ago Suelo has lived in, “a sense of freedom, security and peace most of us would envy.”

Suelo’s choice isn’t without critics. He appears to be a mooch on society, by taking from our excess to feed himself and seems to give nothing back. Suelo responds with a series of questions.

“Why do most goods flow from the poor to the rich, from the workers to the non-workers, from those who produce to those who produce little as it has been ever since the beginning of money civilization?” Suelo said. “Why is it okay for a typical American child, who holds no job, to play with toys, the same toys which are made by a child overseas who works 15 hours a day in a sweatshop? Now tell me who are the moochers, and who is taking advantage of whom?”