If you try to save money by cooking at home, you walk into a grocery store where three massive conglomerates own every brand on the shelf and have colluded to raise baseline prices by 40% over three years.
If you try to cut costs by renting a modest apartment, you face corporate landlords using automated algorithmic software to artificially inflate rental rates across the entire city simultaneously.
If you try to opt out of car debt by using public transit, you realize municipal budgets were slashed to protect the auto industry, leaving you with zero reliable infrastructure to get to work.
You aren't making "poor financial decisions."
Every single alternative route to survival has been intentionally bought out, consolidated, and monetized to extract maximum profit from your baseline existence.
They don't want you to build wealth; they want you permanently trapped on a treadmill where every necessary life pivot just leads back to the exact same corporate ledger.