You're not the only one, mate. I'm a noob at it too.

Instead of rushing into missions spend time exploring and going through containers looking for ammo. Or you could even try melee.

lol this is funny but go buy some ammo and loot loot loot! everything you can open open it and take it until you realize the things you need to craft, mod, and build. you can also mark items for tag so you know what to pick up use a pipe pistol i seem to find .308 and .38 rounds everywhere because of raiders. the least common ammos are gamma rounds 2mm cartridges .44 rounds .50 calibers and .554 rounds.

Are you playing on PC? Just open the developer console lol

Respirator wrote Are you playing on PC? Just open the developer console lol

that takes all the fun out of it though

Loot everything when you are a low level, when you find a trader, trade everything you don't need and either trade it for caps or ammo. Normally what I do is if I have like 2,000 caps worth of stuff to sell and the trader only has 150 caps, I still give them everything but buy ammo that's worth up to 2,000 caps.

If that makes any sense.

This is just a piece of advice along with a Tip.

Always barter the character before starting a Quest/Side Quest for more Caps, be aware that your Charisma may not be high enough to persuade people into giving you a lot of caps, I can only say to you to not be too greedy when asking for more Caps for the completion of the mission, or else you'll end up with getting the original amount.

You may only get 100 or 200 extra caps, but in the long run you'll be able to spend the extra caps on materials for making ammunition or buying it.

Don't know if that could help you, I know it helped me when I rushed through Quests to get easy caps.

I'm sure like me, you've got quite a bit of some ammo type as you simply don't often use a weapon that uses that ammo. Some modifications on weapons, (I think it's the barrel) changes the ammo type and hence increases the damage too.

I literally loot every container I find. The ammo adds up if you do that.