I agree with what you said, but until your household jointly makes 75k+, it’s really hard to save money when just existing eats up most of your expenses. I felt like I could breathe at 75k when my wife wasn’t working, 100k was when I could cover all bills and still have enough to save up a bit of money. That’s with my being lucky in that I bought my house 5 years ago and my mortgage is only like $900/mo…(modest 2br home in not a great neighborhood ) total monthly bills ends up being about $3k(including groceries, gas, utilities, car insurance and car payment being about $600 for both cars) Wife started working again so with her 50k and my 100k I can finally have financial goals instead of thinking about just surviving. Rent in my city starts at $1500 and I have no idea how normal people are getting by.
One of the worst things about being poor is that it becomes a mentality. If you have spare money after your bills are paid, you get used to it disappearing by life’s circumstances such as an issue with your car, so people have the mentality of “I need to spend it before it gets spent on something else.” That’s why when people do their taxes and get money back for child tax credits and stuff and suddenly they go from a couple dollars in the account to $3000-$5000+ they go out and buy sofas or nice televisions.