tl;dr: American goes to Portugal without knowing anything about it, realizes there's actually interesting stuff and culture in Lisbon, thinks that means it's a super special city or something.
Combine that with an unemployed wife and you have a pretty standard picture of what the average young couple with 1 child is faced with here. (not to speak about the thousands educated and younger than me who are being forced out of the country because they can't afford to start a family or even leave their parent's houses)
Just for comparison I lived for 5 years in London UK, made 3000 EUR a month and could save enough to travel frequently . While renting a 2 bedroom house with a small garden.