I kind of know the feeling as this was happening to me a lot (still is sometimes). The short answer is, you most likely play way too tight.
By that I don't mean that you should start calling all small stack all-ins with random hands. It's just means you might want to get involved into the pot with hands you usually wouldn't.
Let me give an example of how I used to play and you can compare yours to mine. I got a really good stack in early stages (top 10s by chips), by getting insanely good hands and those hands holding. Then I just continued playing tight, as this is/was kind of my style. I've been folding hands like A10, KJ in early and mid positions and to 3 bets of my opponents, because it felt like it's not worth going into the pot and risking my chips on wild goose chases.
So by being extremely tight, while I should be bullying smaller stacks a bit, blind slowly chipped at my stack, where I got into position that I'm left with like 20BB and I started feeling I need to play some hands. 2 bad beats away and I'm out before money.
Lately I've swapped my play a bit. If I manage to get a bigger stack at start, I will loose up a bit and start playing some of speculating hands. I had no problem playing J10s and such from early position. If I start losing too much of my stack, I just tight up a bit again.
With this strategy I do loose early sometimes, but most of the times when I get in the money, I'll get there with healthy stack and I can make a push for final table.
I'm still pretty weak at playing bully at the table sadly. Might need to learn that hehe.
Hopefully you find some of this wall of text useful, so it can help you with your play.
A final thought: We don't play to get in the money. We play to win it all.
