Most small towns and medium sized cities, at least in the USA, have a serious lack of stepping stone opportunities. There are low-paying service and entry level jobs and there are high paying jobs that require extensive experience. There is often nothing in between.
(Little public transport is needed as you can walk the whole town over, but there is usually transport to other towns)
Part of the reason I don’t live in America is I see a lot of people on salaries 2-4x mine who seem to be unable to have time to see their friends.
This is just a choice though. A choice Americans absolutely love making, but a choice none-the-less. On Reddit some dude was trying to argue that an individual needs $70,000 a year in fixed expenses just to live. Bare minimum. OTOH, I have what I consider an absurdly luxurious life and I spend less than $60,000/year TOTAL.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=DwlQ_5A2mKU - this is a video of someone who makes $2,200/month and has zero expenses (her parents pay for everything) and is in serious financial trouble.
The biggest thing I’ve learned is that if you have a monthly expense, it becomes “necessary fixed expense” damn quickly.
Even if it’s $50 a month for telephone sanitizing.
... Wait, how the hell did they figure that out? Did they itemise it? Was most of it just going on a very expensive mortgage or something? Are they including retirement savings?
(I've no rent or mortgage, due to having been very lucky with employer equity, but I'm not sure I could spend 60k EUR a year on myself even if I wanted to; there is only so much stuff that you'd reasonably want to spend money on.)
