re: How can folks afford to live their lives today?

Household income of 125k. We both contribute the max to our 401k and pay extra on our mortgage. We do just fine with 2 teenage boys. Both cats are paid for. I have maybe another 2 years on my student loans since I deferred after we bought our house last year. But my payments are only $180/month We still manage to take a nice 7-10 day vacation every year since COVID. We both still live like we were making 60k total outside the price of groceries and feeding two teenage boys. The biggest savings we had was leaving Louisiana. Car insurance went from $490/month to $170/month. Full coverage and same company.