Did Anya have any means of support?

[tkts]

Before starting to work at the Magic Box, that is.

And, for that matter, before she moved in with Xander, where did she live? The dialogue makes it pretty clear that she does have her own place, but how does she afford it?

In the beginning of Season 5, after snapping at Giles about the price of something or other, she says "I'm sorry. I'm nearly out of money. I've never had to afford things before and it's making me bitter." It's been probably a year and a half since she lost her powers. Had she, at some point prior to that, conjured up a big wad of cash that she's been living off of ever since? (And if so, why would she have done that in preparation for the events of "The Wish," which as far as she knew was just going to be another vengeance mission, no different from every other mission she'd undertaken in the last 1,100 years?)

[wenxina]

While to Anya, being a vengeance demon was kind of a calling, it was probably also a job. Can't remember if there was ever a reference to it being a job. If they were paid by commission, then Anyanka would have made bank for the 1000+ years that she worked under D'Hoffryn's service. That way, she had quite a fair bit of money stockpiled. She wouldn't have had to afford anything before when she was working, probably coz she was good at her job, but once the cashflow ceased, she was left with whatever she had left.

Just throwing a wacky idea out there, s'all.
Cool topic, though.

[orangejuicepony]

Even if she hadn't been paid for her vengeance I'm sure she could have just taken money from her victims, thats another idea.

[Scarygothgirl]

My guess is that when she was disguised as a human in The Wish she would have been living as a human, thus gotten herself a place to stay and some money for her to use until she managed to get Cordelia to make a wish, at which point she would have left it behind and gone back to living in her own dimension. But as she became human she stayed in that place using that money until she ran out.

[Skytteflickan88]

^ I think it was the same dimension the entire time, she changed her own world, not someone elses. But then when the spell broke, and everything was changed back, there still existed a "place" where things had gone to Hell without Buffy. Maybe just a possibilty or a real world.

I believe in the theory that there's zillions of alternative worlds. If I take a right, there's a world where I took left, or took right a second after I did, and so on. So maybe Anya opened a door to one of those dimensions. Or she reached back in time somehow.

[Billie Erin]

I'd imagine that she stole as she doesn't seem to find it unthinkable and seems to have experience of robbery when she so smoothly pulls off the theft in the season 7 episode "Him"