SDHousehunter, if you had no plans to repay debts, then these last few years would have been some of the best ever. You could have borrowed vast amounts fraudulently, buying many houses with no money down. If you’d timed it right, you could now be retired, wondering why people were complaining about things being hard. If you’d timed it wrong, you’d be doing not much worse than you’re doing now.
For responsible young people like you, high asset prices are very bad news, and we’re near peaks on just about all the assets you can think of. For people who bought those assets 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years ago, these are the easiest of times, getting easier with every successive peak in the housing and stock markets.
It depends on who you are and when you were born. My advice is not to let your difficulties become a daily mental millstone around your neck. Other posters gave you good advice on the practicalities of how to spend less. It’s not that hard to find more ways to enjoy simple things that cost little or nothing if you ignore what “everyone else” is doing.
