Sean
Unfortunately you're going to have to find out exactly how determined you are by the sounds of it!
I'm from a very similar background. A very small amount of inheritance (not even close to covering the PPL course) but otherwise I took my first flying lesson at 15. I'm now 30 and can finally afford my CPL ME IR. Every course since then has been paid through employment savings, company share plan scheme and a personal bank loan for CPL MEIR. Don't even mention the APS MCC
... I'll cross that bridge when I come to it!
Lots of missed parties, angry girlfriends who don't understand why I can't spend time/money going away twice a year, currently living back at home to save the extra few £££ for the final push, and I've had a budget calculator moderating my spending for the past 8 years. Believe me, it has not been fun at times and if you follow this route you will have to sacrifice an awful lot. But if it's the only way, then so be it.
My advice would be plan and research everything thoroughly, keep a very good current and future budget (Excel works for me), do your research and oddly (speaking from experience here), don't expect any good luck. Plan for worst case scenario. If some good luck does come your way, it'll come as a pleasant surprise
Best of luck - just keep focusing on that first commercial job, no matter how far away it might seem.