After my second year of University, I had the summer off to work and save up for the next year. My oldest son had just turned 2 y.o. and we lived in a small (~50 residents) village about 5 miles away from the University town where I went to school.
My brother paid the rent and utilities on the 100 y.o. house that we lived in and asked that I house sit for him while he was off in Australia selling cattle embryos – oh, semen too. 
In exchange, I also did some banking, accounting and other errands for him as he was out of the country the entire time and needed the help.
At the time, we were still in somewhat of a recession and in the area that we lived in, there were no office-type jobs (what I had experience doing) and the few jobs that were available were shift-type work. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work when you have a 2 y.o. and no family to watch them in the odd hours. I tried leaving my son with one of my brothers while I went on interviews, but he wasn’t watching him and he wandered into the bull pen. So my brother tied him to the tractor he was working on so that he wouldn’t wander off. He has 4 kids himself now, hopefully he’s learned a bit since then. They’re all still alive anyway.
After a couple of weeks, I found a casual job babysitting for a lady who worked shift work and had three kids. I can’t recall what the hourly rate was, but I made around $25-40 a week. They were great kids and I loved playing with them. That’s as low as I’ve gone in income – 4 months at $100-$160/month. Fortunately at the time, my car was paid off and got 60+ mpg. I don’t remember if I had insurance on the car, it wouldn’t surprise me if I drove without it as I have done that on a couple of occasions (I know, my bad!) We had no cable, not even peasant vision given that we had no antenna and I couldn’t afford one even if we wanted it. We did have a few videos of loony tune cartoons (I still love Bugs Bunny, but my fave is the greedy Daffy Duck of course).
For entertainment, I would take my son to the local McDonalds (driving 50 mph to cut down on gas consumption) and let him play in the play place for a couple of hours for the price of a $1.50 happy meal. I couldn’t afford to feed both of us, so only my son got fed. Or we went to the local playground or just played together at home. I bought the textbooks for my next year of classes and studied so that I could take more than 5 courses and work the next year which I did making a whopping $20/hour teaching computer labs.
I suppose in theory, I could have gone on welfare, or received food from a food bank or something, but there’s that pride thing. Since my dad is a multi-millionaire, I guess I could have asked him for help, but again, there’s that pride thing. But we were happy. And I was skinny. 
This was back in 1990, so in today’s dollars my income would probably translate to $200-$300/month. If I had to pay the rent and utilities, I would have had to make around $500/month back then and $900 or so today. Could I do it on that? Yeah, I probably could.
Fortunately, I don’t have to. But I know that I could.
Knowing you could even if you don't have to is a huge mental victory. Those lean years are a great anchor. I hope you never need to go through that again, but I admire your mindset.
Hey Joe, thanks for stopping by! Oddly enough, I don't think I would mind doing it again if it was voluntary – for example if the stock market imploded and I didn't want to go back to work once I retire, or if I was helping someone else out financially. That's conscious frugality and it seems to have a different mindset than just plain broke. I do know I wouldn't be pulling a credit card out! Fortunately I didn't have any back then, as I had kind of burnt myself in my first year of university with not paying it off on a timely basis.