I almost make that, I'm single, and I'm broke. I drink too much, and liquor is expensive if you're not adverse to going blind. I buy groceries with the best of intentions, but high wages also usually come with high stress, and reduced personal time. So I end up eating out way too much, which is expensive in itself, but more so when you toss $300 of groceries a month. Because I don't have free time, when I do have it, I want to enjoy myself. So I overspend. I had so little free time, it cost me my marriage. So then there is support payments as well.

Housing where high wages are common, are obscene. Housing when my parents bought the house I grew up in was valued at roughly 2front line manager wage/year. Now a house costs roughly 8. And the worst part is you become accustomed to the expensive things. Sure, in high school a bud was an acceptable beer, but once you've tried a few micro-brews, you can't go back. But this applies to everything.

Then, back in the early 2000's, all the savings you put into stock because everyone told you you were wasting your money leaving it in a savings account, and the tech market crashes, so you lost everything there. A layoff here, and another there and 7 surgeries later (I'm Canadian, so the medical bills were covered, but if you're unemployed, which happened twice over the 7 surgeries, you still have to pay all your bills for the 3 month recovery. And the drugs came close to $500 per month without insurance. So you have no where else to pull from other than your line of credit.). Debt adds up, quickly.

With many higher end jobs, you can't show up to work with a car held together with duct tape. You can't show up in a $50 suit.

I'm not saying I have it hard. But after working 20hours a day, 7 days a week for several weeks during crunch time, while getting salary wages, you need to make the sacrifice make sense.