About mid-way through high school the family business went bankrupt and all assumptions about how I would go to college evaporated. So instead I ended up going to an electronics trade school on a student loan.
I did not have to pay tuition until after graduation, but I did have to pay all my living expenses myself. Had a minimum wage part time job from which to make rent, bills and food. Could barely afford to eat.
Got turned onto a store called WareMart that sold mega size boxes of really cheap products. A fellow poor schoolmate showed how to buy a huge brick of fake Velveeta cheese, giant tub of margarine and a potato-sack-size bag of elbow macaroni to make super cheap mac-n-cheese. The secret was to boil the macaroni for a long time so it would absorb a lot of water and get huge, then add a scoop of margarine and slab of cheese. You could eat for weeks on one purchase.
It was disgusting. But I lived, and finished school.
Upon graduation I had three offers at weekly salaries for more money than I had ever held in my hands. When I cashed my first paycheck I went to the grocery story and filled the basket with steaks and grilled one every night. Man, what a feeling. Despite making tons more in later years I have never felt so rich as when I spent that first paycheck.