I actually spent the better part of 2 years homeless and/or living in a car etc. I made heavy use a local college campus lab computers by copying student ids of

I actually spent the better part of 2 years homeless and/or living in a car etc. I made heavy use a local college campus lab computers by copying student ids off sign in sheets which were used for login. Also used a lot of discarded free meal coupons given to new students. Took random contract gigs from IRC, elance style sites, and Craigslist. Also did telemarketing, and random day labor jobs off and on. Eventually a startup gave me free room and board in exchange for programming help. Saved and relocated to an area with more jobs after that startup imploded. Found an abandoned trailer some property owners agreed to let me squat in. Got to tap their electric line in exchange for helping out with deliveries and tech work for their tractor store. Kept up with random craigslist tech gigs etc and started my own consulting company bootstrapped with retail work income and help from friends from IRC for bigger jobs. One of the random contracts I took let me code with free reign and ended up keeping me on as a full time software engineer and gave me several years of experience making custom prototypes and doing pentesting for fortune 500 companies as well as angel funding for a startup of my own. Never had a problem getting work since. Be relentless and don't limit yourself to tech work until you have some buffer in the bank. Be willing to relocate if the market is dry in your area. Never ever stop learning marketable skills and taking interviews you are not qualified for until you are. Most of the "mandatory" minimums on job postings are optional if you have some quality open source code to prove your capability.