Trick is to find a gem with a few bedrooms and sublet. I got a little lucky I guess in that I liked to paint cars and that business has a massive overhead cost. I was never in the black or even green really, but rent was less significant against my business expenses. I could leverage my skills to stretch my paint supplies if I had a roommate come up short. Plus the used car lots I worked for exposed me to a lot of people that needed a place close by and often lacked transportation in general. I used them as runners for bigger jobs I did from a home shop in the back yard.

Getting started with a business like that is hard. I was given a few thousand dollars to start off, but I mostly had to deal with expanding over time where I would buy some new thing or products when a job I had could pay for the tool or thing.

Still the recession of 2007 - 2008 killed the used car market for several months in a row, even at the most scammy ‘buy-here pay-here’ lots, and took me out.