One, its *very* easy for someone, even with a good career and spending habits, to have savings wiped out due to a significant life event. For me, it was a few bouts of employment. My brother, it was some legal trouble.
Two, as everyone here may have noticed by now, RE prices have been outpacing salary growth by leaps and bounds in SoCal. I’m a great example, I only make a few K more annually then I did when I moved here in ’99. So there is the perception that one is ‘priced out forever’, so why bother saving.
As an aside, I think the flat this has led to something a friend noticed in SoCal, he referred to it as a land of ‘perpetual adolescence’. I know many people in their 30’s that are single, renters and spend a good portion of their income in the bars/clubs of Southern California.
