When I moved from the UK to the US I left a fairly nice job paying £30k a year (this was back in the 2000s) and had to start again from the bottom. I earned $6 an hour, and my then bf and I sublet an apartment for $600 p/m (he was on a grad school salary that worked out to $9 an hour). We bought discount food items and everything was thrifted, we didn't save anything, and we went nowhere and did nothing. I have a memory of us buying a sandwich from the gas station as a treat and making it last all weekend (tbf it was like a footlong sub).

Fast forward to now, we have a combined income that puts us in the top 10% of the country. We own a house, luckily got in before prices went insane, so our mortgage is actually less than our sublet was (adjusted for inflation). We still thrift and buy reduced meats from the supermarket, we travel more but because our jobs pay for it, we do eat out a lot more but I still cook most weeknights.

We're better off now by a long shot, but we're still careful with our money, and have crafted some neat tricks to make sure we don't spend beyond our means. If we bought all the new clothes, groceries, cars, and vacations like the movies suggest is normal for a middle class couple, we'd go broke quickly. Also, having zero kids helps massively.

Sometimes I look at what we've achieved and what our net income is, and it's wild to me that people survive on less. Sure, we enjoy things now vs. sticking to essentials at all times, but it's wild that people are expected to live an entire life just getting by on the basics. What's the point of having community, taxes, and law if you still live paycheck to paycheck, surviving just to work and sleep?