Being frugal is for the rich
American salaries are difficult to make sense of from a European perspective. The referenced average salary of $36,000/year for millennials with only a high-school diploma would be a normal entry-level salary for a software engineer in most of Western Europe, and a very good salary for experienced engineers in Eastern Europe.<p>Tax burden is higher here as well, and while the cost of housing is exorbitant many parts of the US, so it is in cities like Dublin, London and Paris, but without the salary adjustments you see in San Francisco, New York, etc.<p>This makes it difficult to understand why frugality is impossible for an American making triple the average salary of an average Czech or Croatian.