Yes and it is an eye opening experience.
I was just out of college and on my first "real" job which was in outside sales to open a brand new territory in NC introducing our products. I got a lot of rejection but being persistant paid off in the long run.
My boss who happened to be my uncle limited the amount of money I could spend at a hotel for my overnights and looking back, I stayed in some pretty shady unsafe places but I could not afford to go over the limit of $35 at the time for total cost of a room including taxes.
When I was on the road I did have a limited expense account and the girl who processed the expense reports and sent checks was very slow and it could be a 3 week wait on reimbursement which meant I was on my last penny a lot. When on the road, I would eat the cheapest thing I could find that would keep me going. I saved the soap, lotion, shampoos and conditioner and used them at home as well. At home, my pantry was peanut butter, potatoes and beans.
I learned a lot from my experience, especially about delayed gratification, and I know it helped me to this day to be where we are now.
When I met hubby, he was going to MBA school and after we knew we were going to get married, we lived together in order to save the monthly rent and expenses from my apartment. We scrounged and saved. We are very much planners and have been all along.
Now my daughter questions why I have such a stock of TP, paper towels, food etc. We could probably live 6 months on my stock of items from the freezer and pantry. She doesn't understand but now that she is on her own, she soon will. Still, when I have any extra funds or if I see a great deal on something for the pantry that won't go bad, I stock up.
We managed to get through everything and then when the stock market crashed not once but 3 times, we lost a lot of ground on our investments. We worked hard to replenish and make it grow back to higher levels than before... we did without the new swimming pool, new car, new clothes, etc in order to make sure we were financially sound first.
We were fortunate enough to have insurance through most of the hard periods. At one time we had COBRA which was ungodly expensive.. just the 2 of us for basic coverage was about $1500 a month.
Going back to the sharing the hotel room... I am on the page with Cheryl that if this is for business, then business should be funding the trip.
We chose not to try to get pregnant until we were financially sound because we knew if and when we brought a child into the world, our responsibility grew tenfold with being responsible for that child and getting that child out of college debt free.
Our daughter just started her freshman year of college this year and moved into her new condo that we purchased because we hate rent and throwing money away every month. She is going through a big learning curve with managing her house with limited money. Of course we will not let her fail financially but we feel she has to go through this process so she better appreciates what she has.
Interesting question!