It's still mind-boggling sometimes to realize that people who you assumed had their shit together, in all reality, don't. Business majors, for one, but I'm sure if you look too hard at any group you'll find some of the same issues.
Still, it blows my mind. My dad is a tenured professor at a private university in their school of business. He's been there for 30 years. On his salary - which I have no idea what it is or was, but now that he's got seniority, I'm fairly sure it's into six digits - he and my mom bought a house, raised four kids in private, religious schools, and didn't have my mom work until the youngest was in high school. Were mom and dad frugal to get by on that salary? Oh yes. We were the odd family out as far back as I can remember - no cable, no AC, no new cars...
My mom retired early; he put in for phased retirement last year, where it's some kind of phased thing that he'll get less and less duties until he's done in three or five years or whatever. He told me that he should have retired years ago, back when he still whole-heartedly loved work, but he wasn't sure then that he wanted to be retired. Now he's sure.
My mom was frankly appalled at the comments from his coworkers when he announced he was going into phased retirement - tenured, respected professors of business, who have Ph.D's and teach folks going for their MBAs, etc - who stated they'd be unable to ever afford to retire. Her exact words: "What have they been DOING with their money for the past thirty years?" The people who think they are able to retire - much less retire before age 65 - are in the utter minority out of these people.
And these are the people who teach the businesspeople of our country. I see a slight flaw here.