This gets a lot easier if you have somewhere reliable and preferably free to stay when you need to start working again. Even if you have paid off your own place or been given a place for free you have bills to pay on it. I guess you can rent it out while you are away, but that seems less than ideal to me as how do you keep it maintained if you aren't in the country? It just ends up being another cost.

I would have loved to have done this but the housing situation has always put me off.