seriously. I had a client who brought in six figures per month after expenses. He still barely scraped by because he (1) was in major debt which he never paid down, only refinanced, (2) kept renovating his house unnecessarily (3) refused to stop taking vacations to Liberia (4) for some reason his wife is credibly accused of war crimes which occurred after they got married.

i was a college student and i had better credit, but he had access to more liquid funds. it was weird. if he missed a week of work, he'd be fine. if he missed two, he could not handle the pileup of bills. i could take a couple months off work and be fine. like i said, weird.

my old boss found some criminally interesting clients.

That really should be what's taught in schools instead of trying to teach them to pass some tests to get the schools money

I distinctly remember watching some movie years ago that involved an American family dealing with debt/low income. They lived in a pretty big house and garden with a ton of crap inside, a good looking car too, and it didn't strike me as a poor family.

It was fictional, of course, but when half the Internet went "Nintendo raised prices from 70 to 80 bucks, I guess I'll stop buying since I need food", that implies to me they had no problem buying full price 60/70$ games (a luxury) consistently, and complaining about lacking basic needs. Same for a lot of people seemingly having multiple same gen consoles.