The first year of it was spent living with family, paying the bills via some light contract work. At that point, I wasn't really sure of where I wanted to go startup-wise, so I leaned on them for a bit.
From there, I moved to Atlanta and into the house of a business partner of mine. Initially, he was working fulltime at a day job while I worked on our product. This lasted for about a year and a half before he left that job.
The last year and a half were spent surviving off savings, stocks, about two months of contracting, etc. In the end, the runway ran out, and the house was foreclosed on (kinda happens when you don't pay the mortgage for a few months). We launched our product the day we moved out of there.
It was the most stressful time of my life, the most work I've ever done, and I feel like I aged a decade in that 3.5 years. But it was easily the most amazing time of my life.
I'm now living in Manhattan and working for an awesome company, but I still miss the startup life. I figure I'll end up doing it all over again in a few years, once I come across the right idea and strategy.