I have not lived paycheck to paycheck since I started living on my own. Instead, I lived within my means and set aside at least a little of every paycheck. When I met my wife, I had a used 350cc Yamaha, and when that crapped out, I bought a Honda 450 CL. I rode in the snow, rain, etc, and held full-time jobs in construction until I got the chance to go back to school for another semester to pick up some relevant job skills and bought a really beat-up car. My wife and I bought used vehicles, lived in clean but dumpy-looking and poorly-heated apartment buildings and worked our tails off until we could afford to buy a little piece of land and put a house trailer on it, and then we settled in and continued to save and save. If you spend less money than you earn, you will be able to save, and eventually, you will be able to invest in real estate (at least a starter home) in which you can establish and grow your equity. The interest on your primary residence is your best tax break if you are in the low-to-middle class. My wife and I leapfrogged through 4 more properties over the years, until now we have sold our most expensive property and have settled into a modest little 1-story log house and invested the excess.
Anybody with a regular income should establish a budget (NO credit cards) that allows them to live within their means. If this means driving a 4-5 year old car (or NO car if you have public transportation), doing without cable, cutting back on phone service, buck up and do it. Nobody is going to save money for you. Lots of people are willing to dump on the boomers, claiming that our SS burden will collapse the economy. That's a bunch of crap, and some incremental adjustments could easily make SS healthy, if our congressional representatives would grow a set. BTW, I have been paying into SS every year since I was 14 (maintaining a cemetery by myself at that age). I never spent those early paychecks, banking all of them so I might have a chance to go to college. When I got to college, I kept a little pool of cash around (several hundred dollars) and bought, repaired and re-sold guitars and amplifiers and worked weekends in my band playing frat parties and private parties. Every summer, I worked all the hours I could get at local wood-working mills to fatten up my savings. If I had gone to college on borrowed money, I would have been screwed for years. As it turned out, at the end of every year, after paying for tuition, books, rent, food, etc, I had more money than I'd had the previous year, and I still got to treat myself to the occasional pizzas and beers.