I think this observation is true. I'm not nearly as high as you, more close to top 15% but only mid-20s still. But this is something I see with a lot of people my age too that I categorically know are not earning nearly as much as me. They'll have < 3yo BMWs, Mercedes, Audis etc. and you just know most of these are all on PCP finance probably costing upwards of £400pm

You quite often read statistics about how so few people have more than like £3k in savings and, to me, I can never understand how. But when you start to look around you at how many people are living this "buy now, pay later" lifestyle you start to realise that, actually, for many this is just the norm.

My brother's gf is the personification of this. She dropped out of A levels straight away, got accepted onto a nail salon apprenticeship which turned out just to be a way for the owner to get cheap labour, as is common with many of these I understand. So now she just works 3 days a week for a few hours at a time doing nails. But she always has the latest iPhone, always buying shed loads of clothes and other consumerist crap. No idea how she funds it, my parents think my brother's being taken for a ride