Not so easy anymore with student loans for a lot of people. Between the my girlfriend and I, we are currently paying $1300 a month on student loan payments. That's pretty much a mortgage payment right there (for the Midwest, where we're living).
And my student loans only got up to ~$25k. The average student loan debt per student at graduation was $37k as of a couple of years ago. Mine will be paid off within a couple of years, at least. She still has a long way to go.
I honestly don't know how most people outside of software development or other high paying jobs make ends meet, nowadays.
We're doing alright and we bought a house earlier this year, but we're still having to juggle money around during the month to make sure everything gets paid.
And yet we're in the top 10% for household income in the country, supposedly (I'm not bragging; pretty much every individual developer on Hacker News that lives in SV should be in the top 5%). It really, really doesn't feel like it.
