It's probably not as bad as you think.

Working in retail whilst you're reading your degree is fine. You can't start your proper career because you're still working on the qualification you need to get your foot in the door, and you can't do a 40 hours monday to friday job because you need time for lectures. The only options that really leaves is food service or retail, which is what the vast majority of students do.

A part time shelf stacking job doesn't pay enough to have savings. To do that you need to earn more money than it costs you to live, and if it was possible to do that and read a degree at the same time, student loans/grants/financing wouldn't be a thing.

With house prices being the way they are I wouldn't have thought anyone own their own place at 24. You need to have been working for a good few years in a full time career first to get a deposit and be accepted for a mortgage - I graduated at 21 but It took me till I was 27 to buy my first house (and that was in 1998, when things were a lot easier).

The car things shouldn't be a worry either. Even an old banger is expensive to run, so the only time you really want to own a car is if you have to have one to get to your job - that way the amount of money it allows you to earn is greater than the amount of money you plogh in to it every month. Learning to drive isn't difficult at all, when you get a "real" job just pay for one of those intensive courses where you do it all in a couple of days. Couldn't afford a car when I was a student (not that it would have helped much - Oxford is in a state of perpetual gridlock and there's only two parking spaces in the entire city), but I've got four of them now if you count the one my wife drives and the one I got my daughter so she could learn to drive in.

Debt is just standard fayre for students. If you're making enough money to support yourself and pay for tuition unaided it means you're spending far too much time working and not nearly enough studying.