I used to live on <$1k/month easily. The main difference between then and now is that I lived in an area where it was possible to keep your rent pretty low and still live in a reasonably central part of town just by having a reasonable number of roommates (i.e., you share a house/apartment, but everyone still gets their own bedroom). Once you have that sorted, it's basically just a matter of not going nuts on anything else. I think the real challenge is to build up savings at a rate that will allow you to get out of the "if anything serious goes wrong, I am screwed" level of things. Like, say you are making things work fine and even setting by a little money every month. Then you get hit by a car and have to go to the ER, then get stuck with even a $1k hospital bill (which, from what I have heard about ER bills, is probably nothing) and a couple of weeks missed work (and therefore, probably missed wages). You're probably back to square one on savings, maybe even in the hole.