Yeah your ability to spend more increases 1:1 with how much you make. I’m approaching 40 and I’ve been working in the oilfield for 15 years. I have no education but in my field experience is more important anyway, so I’ve worked my way up and make a pretty nice salary. Well what I’ve learned along the way is that your spending will naturally track with your income unless you make an effort to be aware of it and do something about it. My most recent misstep was about six months ago I traded in my pickup and bought a Mercedes with an $900 a month price tag. Sure I can afford it but I certainly didn’t need it. It’s $400 more a month than my pickup was and purely a vanity purchase. I’m not upset with myself, I love it but I’m aware that I didn’t need to spend that much on something that will one day go away without making my life any better in the long run. All I did was make retirement that much harder. And this translates into everything. Like you said it’s easy to spend $500 on food you could have spent half that. Same with entertainment. Same with silly travel upgrades like first class or the suite hotel room instead of the regular hotel room. Or the second vacation of the year. Or the new cell phone. Whatever it is. It’s very easy to spend $3k (or whatever) a month that you didn’t need to spend when your next paycheck is just a week away. Mercedes aside I caught myself in those habits years ago and curtailed them to the point that I am putting 15% of my salary into retirement and 5% into savings (just for vacations or whatever we might want to buy) I went from a 30 year to a 15 year mortgage, things like that. It’s just so easy to let it slip through your fingers especially as your salary starts to get what many people would call large. But the same thing applies to someone making $40k a year as it does to someone making $160k a year. It’s the biggest mistake younger folks make, it’s simply not realizing how much more you are spending on little things. It’s only $5! But it’s the aggregate that kills you.