It's interesting how people see lives as an outsider - I see many who are paid well yet are unhappy and complain they are poor all the times. I have been living in the last 10 years in the US (near the St Louis area) as an international student.

Some of the complaints are true, for example, housing has become very expensive. Part of what to blame is immigrants/international students (especially ones with rich parents in undergraduate) who drive up demands for land and housing.

But on the other hand, I know many millennial friends -- females and males -- who complained they "can't cook" and would eat out every meal and "food is very expensive." That "can't cook" disability is especially common among American friends for some reason. I know friends who work at Walmart who take home $1300 per month and have cell phone plans with unlimited everything for $120 per month because they can't live without a "good phone." Same for having pets, taking credit card loans, car payments, Netflix subscriptions, game consoles, dresses, cosmetics, non-GMO food, fancy gadgets, etc. When a phone or a laptop breaks, they say that's a piece of junk and throw it away to buy a new one. And at the end of the month, they ask where the money went. Sometimes I think because some people think they are entitled to the "lifestyle" they have now.

While I don't think it's fair to say everything has to stay the same, but I have seen and know people who don't take those things for granted in grad school. I see some people had depression, yet they didn't get a dog as a companion because they knew they couldn't afford a dog. When a laptop broke, they would try to ask a friend to fix it.

Yet, I think you would rarely hear a person complaining they couldn't afford a dog, you only hear people who have dogs and complain that "dogs are expensive" "people who have dogs are discriminated against" when it comes to housing, and they don't "make enough money." You hear people who complained they had to throw the laptop away to the trash can because it breaks after 2 years and they got ripped off for a piece of shit, and can't afford a "good" (aka expensive) new one. You hear people who dumped their phones in the toilet and are like "I just know Apple and iPhones, and I like blue bubbles, don't ask me to buy any cheap shit," and at the same time "I don't make enough." You don't usually hear the person who rocks their 5 year old secondhand Android phone with a broken screen complaining about not having money to buy another phone.

Sometimes I wonder: Did their parents not cook at home ever? Did their parents change cars every 5 years and phones every 1.5? Did their parents throw a computer away because they spilled coffee on it? Did their parents only use Apple because they only know Apple? Did their parents never buy secondhand products?

The entitled are the ones who tend to complain the most about money. On the other hand, I see many who see life as self-sufficient, live humbly and enjoy life for whatever they have. The unprecedented amount of advertisement and social media might have contributed to that sense of entitlement. Keeping up with the Joneses is hard, who would have thought?