But then theres me and my wife, we bought the cheapest house in the neighborhood, we bought and paid off cheap cars, we designed our finances so we could easily life off my wife's teacher salary. Sure I take dev money and we buy more with it, but our total cost of living fits right around $2900 with half of that going to my mortgage.

We've added nice perks to the house: deck, redid the bathroom & kitchen etc... but those are for us and making us happy. We didn't do it to keep up with the jones