It would be tight, but not as impossible as it feels now; 680 seems a little low, my math had it closer to 730-ish. My mom got 40+ hours every week at a convenience store around that time, granted we didn't have a new car (ever), but comparing it to now it seems impossible.

Maybe I'm misremembering but rent was cheap not very long ago, in early 2004-ish I was paying $250/mo for a very small 2 bed house and the lady I ended up marrying had just moved out of a single-wide trailer that she was paying $100/mo for. At that point I was working at one of the same stores my mother had worked at except I was getting $5.15/hr (minimum wage at the time).

Now it seems like cheap rent is 5x that much and minimum wage here is still just $7.15.