"I now volunteer with homeless people and honestly it's laughable the way some people plead poverty when they are on 6 figure salaries."
A lot of people have just grown up privileged and entitled and never encountered genuine financial misfortune. They simply don't understand, unless they have really high emotional intelligence and empathy (something that kind of background doesn't really tend to cultivate because, at the end of the day, it's expensive).
So many people make their own hell. If you're on 6 figures- hell, if you're on anything remotely even close to that - you can have an absolutely lovely life, one in which time is valued over money, in which work is something you love but don't have to do, in which relationships come before bills, and a house is somewhere lovely but modest to love. Yet so many people throw that away, for what? A big, draughty pile of bricks, a car that is the dimensions of a tractor, and an exclusive school system that perpetuates inequalities.
Rousseau had this brilliant way of conceptualising this. He said there was a difference between "amour du soi" (genuine self-care, self-respect which is internal and self-sustaining) and "amour propre" (care for what other people think, which always looks outside of the self for validation). Amour propre is this corrosive thing, it's not just a kind of "keeping up with the Joneses" in consumer terms, but also a lack of independence, an inability to stand alone and say "This is me". At the same time as it looks outward, however, it's very atomising, and the opposite of being a true member of society as a collective - because everyone is always competing with one another, and that means you can't find solidarity with others. Amour du soi, however, lets the individual harmonise with wider society, but on terms that allow them to be self-reliant. If you are yourself in a self-sustaining way, you no longer need the approval of others, and life is no longer about performing.