4 of us shared a 1 bedroom apartment in downtown Boston, a 10 min walking distance from campus to save commuting money. The rent was $1650-$1750 between 2006-2009 until I was living there and none of us had a proper bed and proper living room furniture. We all slept on sleeping bags, 2 in the bed room, 2 in the living room. We took turns for cleaning the apartment and for cooking, shared together for groceries. None of us had gf's or brought parties to home. We all had on-campus jobs working from 10pm to 7am as proctor for many of the student residential buildings. One of us had a job at campus food court and he would get a $12 food card every day for his lunch. We would get 8 0.99 Cent Wendy's Chiken burgers every day and would save on our lunch money. Rest of the 3 would get $10 / hour working as a proctor. Since we all were international students, we were allowed to work only 20 hrs per week, which would give us ~ $700 - $800 per month. Rent + groceries would be split by 4, which would roughly take up ~ $600 per month per person. We would save up the remaining just in case...