I haven't been able to afford anything since 2014.
I've played on and off for years, and barely have made a million dollars. Now I am content with just driving around and happy I have my apartment before all the prices were re-adjusted. I was able to make most of my money when payouts were still good. My friends and I would farm this one level when you flew into Fort Zancudo. You could easily pick up $70,000 per run and it only took about 8 minutes, 5 minutes if you were really good. We got it down to a fine science.
Then Rockstar made it more difficult to redo the same levels, then they made it even tougher and reduced payouts to barely a few thousand. It wasn't worth the effort or time.
Then I stopped trying.