Monk walking towards the world of the 5% If you are a Westerner and new to Buddhism, you might be surprised to learn that most monks use and handle money. I have calculated that around 95% use money while 5% do not use money. The general consensus of those I have consulted say that about 2 or 3 percent do not use money but I used a 5% number to be safe. In this article I will give an itemized number crunch and explain how I came up with those numbers and you can see if 5% is safe and maybe double my original estimate.