Inflation is cooling, yet many Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck

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.