My parent's friends live in Melbourne. I live in Sydney. Houses here are considerably more expensive, which makes this story all the more unbelievable.
They are married with three kids. She doesn't work and he's a credit analyst making something like 160k/yr (dripping with irony). Up until a few months ago they lived in a four bedroom house somewhere in Melbourne (worth something like 500k). They sold it but didn't make too much of a loss on it. We were all having a conversation (my parents, them, and myself), and somehow their finances came up. Long story short, they are in so much debt they need to save up for purchases around 100 dollars. They need to save before making such a purchase! At this point they were actually smiling and laughing about this, all while I tried to hold my jaw up from disbelief.
The other week my mum tells me that they've moved. I rolled my eyes immediately. She went on to tell me that they upgraded to a new house worth 750k!!! And this is the kicker: The house is now so big that she can't handle the cleaning responsibilities herself. So they have hired not one, but TWO FRIGGIN MAIDS!! At this point I said one thing to my mum. " They'll be working until the day they die."
I still cannot fathom how it's possible that people can be this ridiculous.