My Grandparents told me stories too from those years when they were children. One story that stuck was they were very short on food at one stage. Than one day they found a yam growing in a field that had been missed. They turned that yam into a soup, which got them through another week. They couldn't afford anything else.
Right up to their deaths in the mid 1990's they lived very frugally and wouldn't spend on unnecessary things

Even know it feels tough at the moment. I still have a good selection of food on the table every night and have plentiful stores