Student is debt free after couch-surfing
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 was 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 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.
All that would change today when he started a new job in Wellington that included accommodation and hot showers.
‘‘That’s going to be change,’’ he said. a nice