[chmod775]

In many European counties it's easily feasible to just study all your life while working ~20 hours / week. I won no lottery but had no issue spending a decade of my life pursuing interests at universities while working 20-30 / hours a week in a comfortable software dev job.

If I'm paying for "free" education with my tax euros, I might as well use it.

[alemwjsl]

There are lots of stipends etc. If you don't plan to have kids, and you don't care about luxuries, you will have healthy food and a roof and not be thinking about money. Probably the decision is to forgo luxuries and child raising, and hope you don't need to help a sick relative etc. if you want do to this forever. But it is not impossible in STEM.

[cluckindan]

That works as long as you don’t expect to graduate: in many EU nations, higher education students are required to complete at least 60 ECTS credits per year, or lose their study right / enrollment.