But hardly "money and power and influence". Nor is it necessarily "comfortable" either.

I suppose it depends what you mean by "comfortable". What I mean by it is that sense you've got something in reserve that can be pulled out to meet a crisis, and an awful lot of people don't have that.

Here's an analogy for what I mean by "power and influence" - imagine you've got some bit of physical work to do, making something. You need some tools in order to do it. You might have a splendid top of the range set; or you might have a very basic cheap but adequate set. Either way you can do the job. But if you haven't got those basic tools, you are just stymied, you just aren't going to be able to do it at all.

A little money and influence and knowhow can likely get you a long way. But if you haven't got that...