So many people live paycheck to paycheck that saving is just this intangible concept that &quot;wealthier&quot; people do. No one they know saves, no one taught them to save growing up, and even if they tried, they probably couldn&#x27;t. Cost of living has outmatched wage growth; it&#x27;s a mess.<p>On the personal responsibility side of it though, I&#x27;m willing to bet that over recent decades, another thing that has also inflated is many peoples &quot;minimum standard of living&quot;. I&#x27;ve seen people who, for probably very cathartic reasons, will make very poor spending choices on food, electronics, gas guzzling cars and other things instead of plan for items that move their lives forward.<p>And the sad part is that everyones minimum standard of living SHOULD be going up, we all SHOULD be living better then our previous generation. But the actions of many in the governance tier of our society have chosen otherwise for us.