> No, it's not about living as a monk, it's about not compromising when things really matter.

If you cut back on living expenses, you could give thousands every year to hungry kids or the environment or [insert good cause here]. Those are all things that really matter. Especially over the course of many years, you could make a real difference. You don't get to handwave away this point just because it's inconvenient to your argument.

You're trying to find a loophole in your own logic to excuse your own behavior that violates your self-proclaimed values. I get that nobody likes cognitive dissonance, but it's quite obvious you're not being internally consistent here.