- prices are not that expensive like in the nordic countries. If you cook at home most of the week, you can easily spend only around 350-450 EUR/month eating healthy food
- renting is still hard (it's not so easy to find an apartment), but you can get a decent place for around 1.5K EUR/month (or less). I pay 1.2K/month for a 80 sqm (not city center, but not outside of it neither)
- if you have > 10 years of working experience, you can definitely reach the 100K EUR/year (not FAANG). It's not easy, but not insanely difficult. Reaching 80K EUR/year is even more standard. This puts you on the top 10-5% of earners in Germany, so you get to save a lot of money per month
- electricity/gas bills are getting more expensive, but still you won't notice with your kind of salary
- health insurance is good enough
- public transportation works just fine (not the best, but surely good enough). Tons of options (bus, tram, trains, bikes)
- big cities in the west are welcoming to people who don't speak German
Compare this with the situation of other european countries like France, Italy (a bit cheaper than Germany in general, but salaries are way lower in IT: around 30-40% lower) or even the Netherlands (not cheaper than Germany, and salaries are usually ~15% lower in general for IT). So, if Germany is doing bad, I cannot imagine how other EU countries are doing.
The only thing Germany needs to fix is the winter time (you cannot expect to have healthy people when the sun sets at around 3-4pm in winter).
P.S. And I love the work culture: "9-5 -> work. Outside of working hours -> don't even bother reaching me, I won't answer"