Couch-surfing for one year
"I didn't eat a lot of food that needed cooking in an oven or anything, lots of noodles and budget bread." Matheson Brown
Matheson Brown has saved thousands of dollars by couch-surfing, showering at a local gym, and eating leftovers for a year.
The 21-year-old Taranaki man is looking forward to getting into his own bed after spending the last academic year couch-surfing around 22 Dunedin flats.
The Otago Polytechnic Outdoor Leadership student said he could not justify paying rent for a flat, as his course often required him to be away on trips.
Plans to to live in his brokendown van were thwarted by mould and caterpillars, so he went to ‘Plan B’ – couch-surfing’ – and his frugal lifestyle has allowed him to finish the year debt free.
Brown said the key to staying at someone else’s home was to not overstay your welcome.
Crashing on a Scarfie’s couch meant you were usually the last to go to sleep, he said.
Instead of showering at his friends’ homes, adding to the power bills of his temporary flatmates, he would go to the local student gym. The hardest period was when he got ill, ‘‘like really sick’’, and did not have a permanent place to stay.
‘‘I survived, so I can’t complain.’’
People sometimes let him share their bed, or let him stay in their bed by himself if they were away.
He stayed in a range of student flats, many getting extremely cold during the depths of the Dunedin winter.
Brown, who does not own a phone, said it was also hard when he got to a new house and found it was locked.
But he had no regrets, saying the couch-surfing lifestyle ‘‘was awesome’’.
It had saved him thousands of dollars in rent and kept him out of debt during his last year studying in Dunedin.
His approach to food also helped his financial situation.
‘‘I was eating stuff out of bins, and the leftovers off peoples’ plates.
‘‘I didn’t eat a lot of food that needed cooking in an oven or anything, lots of noodles and budget bread.’’
He graduated last Friday, and had been staying in bush near Nelson for the last week.
‘‘I’ve had one shower in the last three weeks.’’
All that would change when he started a new job as an outdoor instructor on the Kapiti Coast on Saturday.
It includes accommodation and hot showers.
‘‘That’s going to be a nice change.’’