Or it can be eaten up by one emergency room trip and three days of intensive care.

Quite a few countries have solved this problem.

Unless you can't work, have to retrain, your work is dependent on not driving a beater, driving one of these is not banned due to environmental concerns... then it would delay nothing. Ultimately you will incur maintenance costs.

The trade-off between non-existent luxury is most visible in Europe. We get small flats, mostly. The choice is between way too small inconvenient flat, inconvenient location that forces hours of commute or being already rich.

The flats these days are much less luxurious than older post-war ones, and way smaller. Then again families were even twice as big and multigenerational, but flats were even 5 times bigger. The better furnishings these days slightly help but not enough.

Then again, there tends to be public transport that works, except in USA. So maybe you could get away with a bicycle commute if your health allows it. Not quite yet in most cities though.