How do small private developers fund living expenses?

Development fees are paid during the project as a percent of total costs spent each month in the draw. The hard part of development is funding all the costs on your own balance sheet prior to capitalizing the deal (and of course building the thing, but this is about funding). 

DealJunkie92

How do small private developers fund their lifestyle and living expenses when they are undertaking project/s? The development business is lucrative but the cash ultimately comes in at the very end.

Obviously the big developers don't need to worry about this as they have big balance sheets $ wise.

Do small developers charge themselves DM fees or do they set aside cash or some other way?

At the very outset?  It isn't easy.

Further on down the road, I think the idea is that you aren't committing 100% of your cash to any one project.  That's part of the risk/reward calculus any developer does when embarking on a project - constructing an asset is time consuming and capital intensive (not to mention insanely risky), so figuring out how much liquidity to commit versus how much to maintain on hand is a big decision

Most if not all developers charge a development fee to the project and collect fees that way.

But until you have investors and have capitalized the deal, you need to have the balance sheet to float pursuit/prelim design costs. Takes money to make money.