Manage your finances. Know where every penny goes. Budget as best as you can - plan for all of the things you know you spend money on through a year. It doesn’t mean you can’t spend money on things you like, but it does mean that you know when you can afford it. It gives you confidence and control no matter how much you are making.
Gonna have to go earlier than that; or at least very early gen-Xers. Wife and I (born 80 and 77, respectively) were paycheck to paycheck until we were in our late 30s. Consider until like '98 or 2000, I was making 4.35 an hour (in San Diego, no less) . We are good now, but only because I am in the tech field and we live in a sorta low cost-of-life area. But even now, saving for retirement and my kids college funds doesn’t leave a whole hell of a lot sitting around. Mind that we budget like mad. Know what every bill will be a year out and have buckets for those.
Point of that cool story is that there have been many generations of people living check-to-check. Boomers are probably the closest thing to maybe working a service job, but still having enough to pay mortgage on a little ranch-style house or at least covering rent and other bills.