Well, I spent my twenties (in the 80's) in school, or working for 30K or 36K/year. You can work out what inflation does to those salaries vs. what purchasing power gets you today. Anecdotal, yeah, but it's all I got. And albums cost $4-5 in the mid-70's and I did ok on $20/week for food and stuff in school.
And there was no internet and the only computers filled rooms (but were still fun). One did social interactions F2F, which might actually have been a little more expensive.