I recall when I was hitting level 14 or so WAR, farming for my damn Warrior's Belt +1.
Not because I was all crazy for HQ gear, or because I thought that the extra VIT would make that much of a difference.
But because I wanted it, and it would last me for a good long while. Which it did.
I still have it, actually. I dust it off every now and then for lowbie jobs and level-capped duties.
With one arguable exception, nobody has ever handed me anything in this game, and that arguable exception was someone who I gave quite a bit to without expecting anything in return, who gave me a bit of gil when I needed it.
So frankly, I consider that to be a fair trade.
I spent hours and hours farming various things. I mined. I harvested. I gardened.
I never fished, because it was boring as fuck, but that's beside the point.
That aforementioned time, when I needed a bit of gil?
Leveling COR. I'd run out of money for bullets, and finding the time to farm was difficult. I leveled the job as COR/RNG for the most part, and I did decent damage, all things considered.
Ironically, these days I'm pretty much exclusively COR/WHM, and my gun is rarely drawn in anger. But at least my Marksmanship is capped, and I still retain gear for the purpose of a /RNG set.
So yes, to reiterate what other people have said, if you think making gil to properly gear your jobs is boring, then maybe this isn't the game for you.
Alternately of course, you could just take the route that a wide variety of people have taken, and suck e-cock for your e-money.