I should add that I'm not definitely not exempting myself from this set of attitudes. When I was in grad school in my early 20s (in the mid-late '90s, so it's not like inflation makes a huge difference here) I made less than $17K a year for several years, but I never felt particularly deprived and don't particularly recall not doing things I wanted to do because of money worries. Now my wife and I make more than $100K combined (putting us in the top 25 percent of US workers) and yet we are constantly bumping up against the limits of our income, particularly because we enjoy travelling. I don't feel rich but I know I'm better off than a significant majority of Americans.