I am confused that you would find the question ridiculous.
The context is that a politician was offered a chance to argue that he understands the hardship some of his potential voters experience.
He replied that his understanding of hardship and deprivation is about renouncing to something quite worthless and to stop competing with the Joneses for a while, in order to afford an expensive education.
This is an example of clever planning when you have plenty of resources, but not an unlimited amount of them. It is an investor reasoning, what do I do with my surplus? Shall I squander it, or shall I invest it to make me more money down the line?
This is not the situation many parents with mortgages, or struggling to put together a deposit, will recognize themselves into when taking hard choices about their money.
That kind of families wonder what the next prime minister and his government will think of the gravity of their problems.
Sunak answer is not very reassuring.
Regarding aspirations, there is little doubt that, when it comes to himself and his own, Sunak is a man of great aspirations, just like his parents before him.
But let's be factual.
Sunak's parents had a degree at at time when relatively few people did and getting one put a worker on an entirely different playing field.
It was a time when having a degree in law or even literature was enough to qualify for management positions with IBM or in other improbable, unrelated fields. Competition was really low, unlike now.
His parents built on that advantage to give their son an even larger advantage, through expensive education and the connections it brings (not unlike pretty much all tories).
So what is vision and aspiration for the average person in the country. Something like what he had?
We know that he suggested an increase in apprenticeships just out of school. A year of national service which, behind is dubious usefulness, will keep busy the young at an age when he was instead working on his own aspirations.
None of the paths he suggests most people should follow resemble what he actually did to succesfully pursue his own ambitions.
Sunak does not come across as somebody who looks at his own upbringing as a lucky thing. He perhaps feel that his parents were worthy and he is worthy too.
He is a less absurd candidate as a 'man of the people' than say Trump or Johnson, at least he worked an actual job, put not by a wide margin.
He is also less of a joke, less openly dishonest, than Farage, but just because Farage is quite spectacular in that respect.