When I was in college and living on about $1200 a month in California, I would regularly hear people bitch about how it’s “impossible to live here on 80,000 a year” or some similar amount. I’d always roll my eyes and wonder how they were mismanaging or wasting their money.

I knew one woman who made 6 figures and struggled to survive. She was going out to eat 2-3 times a day, spending around $60 a day on food, and regularly going on $600+ shopping sprees for stuff she didn’t need. Her apartment was absolutely piled with clothes, home decor, and craft supplies she never even used. And yet she was convinced that it wasn’t her, and that California is just prohibitively expensive.