It is foreign to the vast majority of people that you would be making $400k per year of income but unable to afford a $5 breakfast as you say. I'm having some trouble with it too. When if you're paying $150k in taxes, have a $10k a month mortgage payment (about a $1.5M mortgage), and are making $5k a month in student loan payments, you have $70k left over. I suppose I could see your medical bills being so high that this is then a difficult pie to share with everyday expenses. But it's a lot of assumptions to get there.