I don’t know how my wife and I ever managed to survive during our early years, when our combined income was very, very middling and we had two children. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that we were married, emotionally mature, didn’t spend money on things we didn’t need, saved whatever we could, and kept our credit sound.
I remember telling my girlfriend that “Some day we’ll be able to go for a fancy sit down dinner at McDonalds”.
LOL we were downright destitute.
And when something broke went to the library to borrow a manual and repaired the something that broke ourselves.
We had a VCR which was given to us broken, fixed it and then fixed it about twenty more times by taking it apart and cleaning it. Back then they were expensive and we no way had the money to replace it.