I've had two phases of my life where I went without income. The first was getting established as an open source developer, the second was starting a startup (both, interestingly, feel like they have a lot in common).

After college I worked full time for one year. I kept living with college roomies and saved up about $10,000. I used that to work full time on open source for 10 months, and move to Europe (where I stayed).

When I started Directed Edge 6 years later, I did something similar, but had more saved. I got my living costs back down to college student levels to ensure that we had a long runway.

It's easy to stretch money out if you get used to it and easy to save enough money to live on for a year if you've got an IT job. The freedom of knowing that you can survive for a year on $10k while living well, mind you, is pretty awesome and it certainly gives you the flexibility to do something you think is worthwhile.