I've had two phases of my life where I went without income. The first was getting established as an open source developer, the second was starting a startup (both, interestingly, feel like they have a lot in common).
After college I worked full time for one year. I kept living with college roomies and saved up about $10,000. I used that to work full time on open source for 10 months, and move to Europe (where I stayed).
When I started Directed Edge 6 years later, I did something similar, but had more saved. I got my living costs back down to college student levels to ensure that we had a long runway.
It's easy to stretch money out if you get used to it and easy to save enough money to live on for a year if you've got an IT job. The freedom of knowing that you can survive for a year on $10k while living well, mind you, is pretty awesome and it certainly gives you the flexibility to do something you think is worthwhile.
I'd love to hear more about your move to Europe. Did you move for a job and have an employer help out with the red tape, or did you work out another path? Having spent about a year in Europe backpacking during my college days (on $10k, no less), finding a means to make it a full-time experience would be great.
EDIT: I assumed you are/were a citizen of the US and shouldn't have.
Yes, I am a US citizen. In a nutshell, I took all of my overtime and vacation in that year of working full-time and went to Guatemala to study Spanish and met a German girl ... that was September of 2001, so a pretty nutty time in the US, and it seemed like a good excuse to try something different.
I had a job with a startup lined up, which fell through, and then ended up getting hired by the SAP LinuxLab who sponsored my visa (roughly equivalent to a H1-B), so I went back to the US for a couple weeks, packed up my stuff, shipped it over and well, stayed. 6 years (and one job) later I got permanent residence, which meant I was no longer bound to having a company sponsor my visa, and a couple months later quit my job to found Directed Edge.
The convenient upshot of that is that now, at 28, I'm permitted to live and work anywhere in the US or EU.
After college I worked full time for one year. I kept living with college roomies and saved up about $10,000. I used that to work full time on open source for 10 months, and move to Europe (where I stayed).
When I started Directed Edge 6 years later, I did something similar, but had more saved. I got my living costs back down to college student levels to ensure that we had a long runway.
It's easy to stretch money out if you get used to it and easy to save enough money to live on for a year if you've got an IT job. The freedom of knowing that you can survive for a year on $10k while living well, mind you, is pretty awesome and it certainly gives you the flexibility to do something you think is worthwhile.