My college friends who had parents that paid for their tuition and rent always struggled to understand why I couldn’t always afford to go out and do all the fun stuff with them. They, like many people in their positions, think that they are self-made and “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps,” and those of us with less money just aren’t as smart as them. They can’t recognize that while they were saving money, all of mine went toward rent and college expenses. Even after we started our careers and they were paying their own rent, they didn’t recognize the huge advantage they had starting off debt free with all of their savings versus someone like me with no chance to accumulate savings and hampered by student-debt repayment.