Perhaps it all goes down to lifestyle inflation more than any inherent expense scaling with income opportunities. I've heard of people in SF spending $1-$2 a d

Perhaps it all goes down to lifestyle inflation more than any inherent expense scaling with income opportunities. I've heard of people in SF spending $1-$2 a day on food, living in a trailer and showering at work, while making 6 figures of $. I've also heard of people complaining about $2k a month not being enough for food, and bragging about being debt free aka "mortgage doesn't count. A car doesn't either. Credit cards are temporary. Other than that, debt-free!". It's a subtle beast - just before i got latter job i had $3k equivalent fall into my hands from a lucky investment. It was a big deal, and totally worth the effort of navigating the bureaucracy of extracting it into a spendable form. A few months later i got a new job and soon looking back it felt like a waste of effort and a bad decision, since i was now making that much in a month. For a while i just went through my wishlist of equipment faster, still managing to more or less break even every month. It took the crash of 2014 to really make it sink in why saving is important.