A buddy of mine and his wife live in a house owned by my friend's father. His father only has them pay property taxes, insurance, and utilities. Essentially, that equates to their rent being less than $100 per month, plus utilities. My buddy's only source of income is playing poker. He gets people to stake him, then he splits any winnings with those people. If he loses, and the same person stakes him again, he has to pay back the previous stake at a rate of 50%. He's actually a fairly decent poker player and would likely do modestly well if he played on his own dime. But his, and his wife's, money habits keep him from being able to go it alone. He's always waiting on that "big score" to set him up. When money gets really low, or poker isn't going well, he'll deliver pizzas.
His wife is going to school on government grants. Again. They've both quit more jobs than I've had my entire life because they weren't happy at the job, for pretty much the same reasons most of us are unhappy with our jobs. Their household income is probably less than 10k per year. His wife is supposed to get child support for her two kids, but whatever she gets is basically offset by the money my friend is supposed to pay his ex-wife for child support.
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