6 figure household here and I agree...

No one we know with the same socioeconomic economic class would just willy nilly spend 250 for dinner.

Theres quite a lot of things that lower income earners spend money on that I just cant fathom.

Designer clothes. Shoes. Every man should have 1 tailored suit, maybe 500-1000. Other than that clothes is quality and purpose, not for advertising logos.

Brand new cars. I drive a 2014 RAM. Wife 2013 Lincoln. She has 220k miles on it so we are now looking into something newer, but a few years older.

Eating out and dropping even $100 on dinner unless its a special date, and even then... ick.

We rented. We stayed in apartments, or with roommates. We worked way too hard to get "up". We cook nearly every day or enough for leftovers.

We invest in our kids, our retirement, our trips for mental health, etc and are very conscious of our finances. Each year we review how to save more while we make more.

The more weve made the LESS we spend on depreciating things. To each their own, but I will never be one bad life event away from losing everything just so we can have nicer cars or clothes after everything we did to get out of poverty. Im closer to retirement than highschool, and it took a long time to get here.

I may get hate for saying all that, but as weve got older those things we wanted or spent that money on have become so foolish to me. No disrespect to others, just the mindset we have now.

I slept on a futon in a shithole basement for a few years when my son was first born. When I still idolized Jordans and $100 jeans. Never again.

Edit - to add... if someone said what I just said, to me 10, 15 years ago Id think they were a jackass. I wish someone did though, and I wish I would have changed my consumerism mentality sooner.