Why some people are intentionally poor Dan Price's 'Hobbit hole' home costs him $US100 a year. Picture: Youtube/Galfromdownunder Source: Supplied IN a previous life, Dan Price worked in a stressful job as a photojournalist and was paying off a high-interest mortgage. He did it all to support his wife and two children in Kentucky, US because that was what he thought he was expected to do. I told myself, 'buck up and pay the bills'. This is just the way normal life is," Mr Price told NBC News . That was 20 years ago. Mr Price then read a book about "the simple life" and rejecting modernity, which coincided with his family moving to Oregon and his marriage breaking up. An idea was sparked in his head, and he moved into a small cabin in the woods. He kept downgrading his home until he finally moved into an underground "Hobbit hole" where he still lives today. Mr Price lives on less than $US5000 ($5298). His home costs $US100 and he refuses to use welfare or food stamps. Instead he makes a small amount of money publishing a wilderness zine and doing odd jobs around town. I like being able to do what I want to do. I don't believe in houses or mortgages. 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? Mr Price told NBC . People are so incredibly spoiled. My job is simply to live as pure and authentic as I can and make an example for people. Like the generations of hippies and beatniks who came before him, Mr Price is one of a number of people who have chosen to shun a materialistic lifestyle in order to intentionally live a life of poverty. Karen Halnon, a sociology professor at Pennsylvania State University, says the intentional poor are "looking for something real that goes beyond commodity." Dan Kerr, an American University academic who studies voluntary homelessness, lived as a squatter two decades ago in New York. For him the lifestyle was a way to test the idea that "the one-family home with a 9-to-5 job" was "the only way to provide meaning to our lives." But a key characteristic of the "intentional poor" is that they usually have a back-up plan - unlike the truly impoverished. Mr Price has a career he can fall back on if times ever get too hard. Mr Kerr remembers being involved in a squatter eviction in 1995 which quickly distinguished between the intentional poor and the people who had no choice. I could go back home to Cleveland. Some of the other squatters weren't so lucky," said Mr Kerr. Experts say that demographically, people who choose poverty in the US are almost all white. Conversely, approximately half of impoverished people are black or Hispanic. And the intentionally frugal can choose to break their vows of poverty if they want - Mr Price has a mobile phone, iPad and MacBook Air in his Hobbit hole.