@Castanza sounds kind of like my wife and I. I didn’t have college debt, but my starting salary was 28,500. I don’t think I made it out of the 30s until 7 years ago. Thankfully I worked extra shifts/jobs and my wife and I are both frugal. We still traveled every year more than once, but never extravagantly. We now are very Comfortable compared to our peer group. I try to give advice where I can, but most of the time it falls on deaf ears. A recent example, recently we are allowed to take hardship loans out of our 401ks due to a natural disaster in the area. I kid you not it feels like half of my employees pulled the max out for anything you can imagine but an actual hardship or other investment opportunity.