Well, I’d send you my excel sheet of finances, but we’re strangers, so I don’t know what else to say.
I’ll recap: helping take care of my wife who has MS, financially dealing with inflation everywhere, finding the resources for mental health therapy for myself, and helping care for both of our aging parents, while trying to put away for a house of our own is really fucking hard. Even as a guy who writes software for a living as a freelancer.
I have to rent. It’s not a choice for me, and I doubt I’m in some minority of devs who feel this way about economics in the United States.