I'm a little surprised at who I find myself agreeing and disagreeing with in this thread. One of the ones I'm agreeing with is, IIRC, someone who said in another thread that I never agree with anyone.
I was completely wiped to zero in March. I spent the previous 6 years outside Australia, had poured my time, effort and money into a business venture which would have kicked off mid this year, and a few short months before that time became trapped in Australia on what was planned to be a two week visit to a place I hadn't called home for about 10 years. I lost not only my business, but almost literally everything I owned - my clothes (other than about 5 changes of summer clothes), my laptop, my books, my pets, my... well, pretty much everything other than what I was wearing and what was in the day pack I arrived with. If I'd scrambled back abroad it would have been to a situation which wouldn't have been salvageable due to the 2020 nonsense anyway.
I was literally struggling to survive in early Q2 this year. I was literally without money or income, literally not owning warm clothes after about 8 years without dealing with a winter, struggling to afford to eat. Being stuck in Melbourne with my qualifications in this economy, getting employed would be almost impossible other than taking something horrible and minimum wage (and if something not quite entirely horrible for minimum wage was an option, I'd have taken it).
It's now only about 6 months after my lowest point where I was literally struggling to eat and stay warm, struggling to find a safe place to sleep, dealing with the trauma of having lost or been disconnected from everything I love, being sent pictures of my pets which had died in the (lack of) care of the best available homes, etc etc. In cash/savings/share portfolio I have more than the before tax earnings of a median wage Australian. That's not to say I've managed to earn that much, it's to say I *have* that much. I've done it without breaking laws or ethics.
If someone my age (early 40s) in extremely challenging circumstances (some may recall me discussing it earlier this year on this forum, along with a bit of personal history about how I've been down and out before, bounced back, and was optimistic about doing it again despite at that time earlier this year being quite bewildered and not knowing exactly how) who doesn't even live here and has to start from absolute scratch can manage what I have, imagine what someone who genuinely wants to save and make something of themselves can manage. Heck, I'm managing this while only planning to be here temporarily. If I was able to leave the country I'd be on my way out before the end of the week.
As someone else mentioned, people able to do the sort of thing I'm doing have generally experienced poverty and/or hardship at some point in their lives. This isn't the first or second time I've experienced it, and that has definitely given me resilience, drive and knowledge. As an example, when I had very little to do with my time around 6 months ago I haunted the supermarkets waiting for specials, and was often able to get extremely cheap food. By watching for the times things would get discounted, I'd turn up just before those times and get all the stuff just before expiry which was going out extremely cheaply, sometimes walking out with around $50-100 worth of groceries for around $5-10, and eating like a king. You can indeed eat very well for $5 per day, and for months I was eating wilted (extremely cheap) greens, chicken hearts, liver, rice, etc for less than that. If I couldn't get specials I went back to my old uni student ways and ate Mee Goreng and eggs etc. For the last couple of weeks I've been gorging on Scotch fillets and smoked salmon and an array of lovely fruits.
I'm going harder in terms of what I'm willing to do (obtaining money) as well as what I'm willing to skimp and sacrifice on (saving money) than what I'd expect of most people or what I'd generally be likely to do myself, because at my age being wiped to zero puts me in a position of more urgent catch up than if I was in my 20s, but it's far easier to do this in your 20s. I don't care if people think I'm a loser for chasing/choosing the ultra cheap food; other than for a month or so early in the year I've eaten extremely well, and other than recently I've spent very little on food, and I'm just recently rewarding myself, I figure I've earned it (my stock portfolio is up over $10k in the last week, hey, I'm going for steak and salmon). I don't care if I'm usually wearing cheap, crappy clothes. I'm not drinking alcohol (or very close to none), my entertainment has been learning Spanish Duolingo and various forms of reading/research/etc online, various forms of exercise, sometimes hunting trips when possible (I caught a deer by hand! Go me! Plenty of meat!) all of which is free. During the brief time when socialisation was legal, my friends (who were complaining about money issues) wanted to go buy expensive takeaway, thought I was crazy for suggesting we get something from the supermarket, I ate the cheapest available options and they spent about my weekly food budget on a meal, literally paying more than my normal day's food budget on a single drink!
After spending six years travelling around Asia (where I still would be if not for lockdowns/restrictions) and seeing people working so hard (literally, like 60 hour/6 day weeks, not like the nonsense Australians call hard) to live on much worse conditions than an Australian dole bludger can, as well as what I've learned from my own history in Australia as a younger fella, it just seems so easy to thrive in this country. You need to be creative, you need to be versatile, tolerant, etc, but it's really quite easy, and it's usually much easier than now.
Even someone as frugal as me won't wait 5 years between new phones, let's face it, that's just a stupid argument. Average would be 1-2 years at most. I totally echo what has been said about uni student cars. In the 90s, a university car park honestly looked barely worse than today's scrap yards, and today they look literally much better than a 90s used car lot. There was a massive change in that way between the late 90s and early 00s, I was hanging around universities through that time and was very much aware of the change as it happened, and discussed it with my lecturers often between 2002 and 2004.
Housing, sure, that's the expensive thing. *THE* (singular) expensive thing. If you can be creative enough to find a cheap accommodation option, you're laughing in terms of keeping a low budget. I'm driving around in a car covered in panel damage. I love it, gives the car character, makes people give way, and I don't have a hint of the type of pride which would make it bother me, quite the opposite, I'm proud to openly display that my values are elsewhere. The care is very reliable and a pleasure to drive.
You can whinge and say 'no one should have to talk about eating for $5 per day' and struggle to survive, and not save, or you can work hard, save hard, and do as well as you want without sacrificing anything other than the opportunity to be a lazy snob. If you think Australia is tough, go live in just about any other country with only the opportunities a local has, and then come back here.