Dude, this is not in the 70s when you see those suburban housewives driving a bigass 4x4 and pick up their kids and groceries, a lot of shop offer delivery these days, if not, you have Amazon and Uber delivery, and those shop are not like 100 mile drive from your home.
College in America is around 7000 per semester, more if you are overseas, and then local student get financial aid and loan and scholarship. There are even college offering deferred payment plan now. you can go to college even if you are poor and you cannot afford it.
And finally "Struggling" is always a relative term, I struggle to pay my $5500 a month mortgage now and have to dip into my Family Business earning, even tho my household income is around $115,000 a year. that's because that's my wife salary and I used to earn around $80,000 a year when I was working with the NSW Police, I don't work for them anymore, and we had not changed our lifestyle. We are paying $400 for phones and internet, $100 subscriptions. she is paying around $5000 a month on her clothes, shoes, perfume and what not and $2000 for her car and I have a few licenses and my firearms I need to pay around @10,000 a year to maintain.
Different people have different expense, and you start to "Struggle" when your circumstance change.