Am I doing something wrong? (Regarding gear and gil)

[Addicted]

Hey everyone. I recently started playing FFXIV, and I have to say that I'm enjoying myself but, an aspect of this game strikes me in a puzzling manner, namely in how to attain new gear.

As I type this I'm a lvl 20 Thaumaturge and the only equipment I've been able to replace with items appropriate to my class are the hands and body slots. I also picked Weaver so I could craft armor for myself but that as proven extremely difficult since it seems every piece of equipment always requires something from another class and that thing also requires something from another class, making it a chain of materials I'd need to spend days gathering, just for one piece of equipment, which, by pure bad luck, I could even fail to make.

So, faced with this, I thought I could just level Weaver to repair my equipment and buy the gear I'd need from the Market Wards. That also didn't seem like a good idea since most gear costs around 100,000gil per piece and I'm struggling to even have half of that.

So, my question would be if I'm doing something horribly wrong with regards to acquiring new equipment. Because, as it stands, I'm likely to reach lvl 30 with my current lvl 5-10 gear. Unless I'm supposed to do that, which I doubt.