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Working in a factory 40/5/50 is not worth it. I am going to Kill a Grizzly Bear with a bow and arrow!

I ask this question. Can you be a dirtbagger and have a 401k?

I spent my year with my masters, living in a tent, refusing to give in to what society expected. i.e. get a degree, get a job, start popping out babies, etc... I also had the greatest job ever, a waitress at Kathy's, making well below the minimum, but super happy. But, due to my loans, and also my desire to work (I heart physics) I had to leave the tent for the city.

While I may not be a true dirtbagger anymore since I have an apartment with A/C and have started to save for retirement (I don't understand why people sometimes have a problem with this one), I will always be a dirtbagger at heart: reducing my waste, looking out for the people I love, and not giving a fuck what society has to say about all of it.

And Anti, stop trying to cure cancer and put me out of business asshole.

So is a multi-millionaire 30 year old who chose to take an early retirement to travel around the world while staying at some of the finest hotels a dirtbag? Also, since when is minimizing waste only something a dirtbag does?

I'm saving up for retirement so I can become a rich dirtbag, probably the worst kind. You will all hate me, but then I can shun both regular society and regular dirtbags. Yes, I plan to set a new standard for dirtbags around the world. I think I'll start a company.

isn't not taking a shower key (has this been touched on)? if it weren't would it be called clean-bagging?

I don't think minimizing waste (consuming less) is something only a DB does. I just think it's one of the habits they tend to have. You can minimize waste and not be a DB. My point is that I believe dirtbagging can be related to a person's mentality and not always attached to their current living situation and salary.

Aaron has a good point, no daily showering for dirtbags.

Dirtbags are nothing more than free loading moochers living behind the veil of a romanticized view of the pursuit of a passion or a care-free organic lifestyle. Their blind opportunism and lack of self-respect costs them relationships, hygiene and ultimately physical and emotional health.

There is a fine line between natural, organic, subsistence living however. I know many river guides and avid climbers who choose this lifestyle when they are able, but do not resort to dumpster diving or drug abuse. Granted they live outside the "norm" as far as hygiene and their methods of acquiring sundries and food, but it is not at the expense of their health.

Living from a backpack as a minimalist traveler or wild, subsistence living is something to be revered. It only requires that you maintain your overall health at the cost of no one else (including society).

but can they hear you spray in space...???

Being a fully committed, alternative lifestyle climber does not make one a dirtbag, no matter how poor, no matter how ragged. It is the lack of respect for one's self and others that defines the dirtbag. Two scruffy climbers may outwardly look the same, and live and climb pretty much identically. But the dirtbag is the parasite, the one that steals hangers off of existing routes to put on his own, finds a girlfriend to support him and generally lives the life of a leech, takes everything he can from climbing and other climbers, and gives nothing back. That's a true dirtbag.

Some posers may get off on their cultivated "dirtbag" fashion statement. But you ain't really a dirtbag unless you're also a POS.

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