Here's a puzzle worth solving: Drive around any city and you'll see massive trucks, packed restaurants, endless airport security lines, and apartment rents that make your eyes water. Then check any job board and find listings for $12 to $20 an hour. Something doesn't add up, right?
A 36-year-old millennial felt the same confusion and took his question to the r/Money subreddit: How does everyone have so much money nowadays?
He remembers the 1990s and 2000s differently. Back then, even the wealthy families he knew had to budget carefully for houses, cars, and everyday expenses. Prices felt reasonable, sometimes downright cheap, and people's lifestyles looked more grounded and realistic.
Fast forward to today. He's seeing $400,000 apartments, shiny new luxury trucks instead of modest sedans, restaurants that are constantly packed, and friends who seem to take vacation after vacation. To him, it looks like everyone suddenly developed a luxurious lifestyle after COVID, as if they all won the lottery. Meanwhile, almost every job posting he encounters still offers just $12 to $20 an hour.
The Reddit Reality Check
The responses on r/Money didn't sugarcoat it. One commenter cut straight to the point: "Debt is a helluva drug." Another wondered aloud how many of these apparent high rollers would still have their lifestyle "without credit cards." Someone else called a large chunk of the crowd "posers... up to their eyeballs in debt because they just HAVE to give off an appearance of being better off than they are."
Other commenters pointed to social media as the culprit, arguing that feeds are carefully engineered to showcase the flashiest moments of life while conveniently leaving out the bills that arrive afterward.
The Numbers Tell the Real Story
Those Reddit hunches are backed by hard data. Americans are currently carrying about $18.59 trillion in household debt, a record high that's roughly $4.4 trillion more than at the end of 2019, just before the pandemic recession hit.
Credit card balances alone have climbed to an estimated $1.23 trillion as of the third quarter of 2025, the highest level since the New York Fed started tracking this data. Those shiny trucks and crowded vacation destinations our Reddit poster sees? There's a good chance they're financed with borrowed money rather than booming wages.
When you look at actual earnings, the picture gets even clearer. Research on inflation-adjusted wages shows that average hourly pay for many workers has barely gained purchasing power over the last few decades once you factor in inflation. Median household income in 2024 sits around $83,700, which is only roughly back to where it was in 2019 after adjusting for inflation. Not miles ahead. Not even a full step forward.
In other words, the typical paycheck hasn't exploded, even if everyday spending looks a lot louder and flashier than before.
The Pandemic Plot Twist
The pandemic threw another wrinkle into this story. During lockdowns, households accumulated an unprecedented pile of "excess savings" from stimulus checks and dramatically reduced spending. Then, as the economy reopened, they slowly drew down that cushion. That temporary financial buffer helped fuel travel, home upgrades, and remodels just as social media feeds became the primary window into everyone else's lives.
The Instagram Illusion
Put it all together, and the millennial's question on r/Money hits on something genuinely modern. Back in the 1990s, most people only saw their own street and maybe a few neighbors' cars parked in driveways. Your reference point was limited and local.
Now? Every scroll through your phone brings a curated highlight reel of the most expensive moments from hundreds of people. Some of them are genuinely high earners living within their means. Others are simply very comfortable with carrying big monthly payments and showing off the results.
The reality is less glamorous than the feed suggests. Incomes for most people are grinding along at roughly the same purchasing power they had years ago. Household debt has hit record levels. The pandemic savings that briefly made everyone feel flush are largely spent. And we're all living with a digital stage that makes even fragile, debt-fueled lifestyles look like permanent upgrades.
So no, everyone didn't win the lottery. They just got really good credit limits and very good lighting for their Instagram photos.
