I did it for almost 2 years after becoming unemployed and then fighting through the chronic depression of long-term (longer than 6 months) unemployment.
I was lucky that at the time I had neither a mortgage or was renting (I was living with my second ex when it happened), but going from a good income to nothing was a real mind-bender. All of a sudden you are juggling bills for months in advance, allowing car rego and/or insurance to lapse because you can't afford to pay it, cutting back to the absolute bare minimum re food, not going out at all, and all the while trying to get another job.
Plus all the government compliance requirements in order to maintain eligibility to receive payments. Here it was called Newstart, then got changed to Job Seeker. It's administered by Centrelink which is part of the federal department of human services of the Australian government.
I've now been re-employed for just over 10 years (with the same employer)
But the unemployment period set the seeds of the destruction of my relationship with the second ex as her narcissism started to come out since she was thinking I wasn't good enough and I spent a lot of time self-isolating as she wasn't emotionally supportive. It got better once I got a job again, but the romantic doomsday clock had already been triggered.
