its not dire, its just that people have higher expectancy of income than reality; the reality is the average of national income in the world is not that high, msia household average is about 5k ish depending where you go ; while developed nations 7-8k

since this is household and if you seperate it into 2, its about 2.5k (MY), 4k (SG) and 3.5k (aus)

without going into purchasing power, we kinda realise most people earn less than what we believe they do and since its an average, basically it also means a huge group of people aern less than that.

this makes it much obvious really, at 2.5k , 1 k is 50% of nett income after tax, most people i know cant save 50%  and to make matters interesting, you have life "milestones" to keep up to, a reasonably priced car has a DP of 5-10k, a wedding can take 25k and  a house 50k a month, all just downpayments

so basically if anyone is to earn average wage, the accumulation of all 3 would hit him 80k, theres not much room for savings really.