This totally ignores the fact that a big reason salaries are so high in these markets is because cost of living is very high as well. Living on 25K a year wouldn't even cover your shared accommodation costs.
Why not take an extra year to do all those things and also be able to engage with your twenties a bit more actively?
I became much happier when I started to abandon frugality to this degree and bought a used car, picked up a few hobbies that cost a few grand a year, planned vacations that actually pushed my boundaries.
(Bay Area, mid twenties for reference)
So I guess a stoic with a used Triumph motorcycle, a backpack and a copy of ZAMM would be optimal. A pretty decent set of vacations are only a gastank away in the Bay.
The difference in opinion is derived, I think, from how I reacted when I got a big tech job. My earnings went way up relative to that first job, but initially my lifestyle didn't change at all. Eventually I started adding things little by little, thoughtfully I think. I took my first international trips, didn't dismiss hobbies outright because of cost - it made me a lot happier because I was experiencing things for the first time. That doesn't mean I stopped backpacking, drinking beer in the park, or going to cheap concerts - it was additive. At the end of the day, though, my lifestyle increased only by a small portion of how my earnings were. All things considered, my savings rate didn't really change by all that much.
There are some people who do really, really well trying to minimize their yearly spend, but there are a lot of people who could give themselves a little bit more slack and be better off mentally and physically for it. It isn't that they're not working hard. For me, it was just growing with working class parents - I never learned to ski, we drove instead of flew to visit family, video games were birthday presents. Relaxing some of the frugality was part of being thoughtful about who I actually was and wanted to be, and I think that's ok.
That changes the cost equation immensely.
We're trading best time to raise a family for a career. It's wrong and likely unsustainable. And you cannot assume you will get hired in 50s, not yet and not in this industry.
That should be workable for kids. It wont be suburb comfortable, it will have lots of regrets, but the kids will get over it.