>It's a question of living within your means. A guy who's fortunate enough to have an engineering job at EA and IBM
First of all - you are almost never 'fortunate'. Jobs offers do not fall from the sky usually.
Second - you many live well within your means and then have a car accident, or an ill relative, or something else that will make you into piss poor indebted fella real quick.
(Additionally, QA jobs for game companies are almost never lucrative.)
The core problem is that a median income lifestyle is a relatively unstable state due to unforeseen circumstances like your example. A poor person stays poor (if whatever happens doesn't kill them) which means that poverty is a stable state. A rich person can weather at least a couple disasters, so that makes it a mostly stable state. If you're in the middle, you are in a more unstable position compared to the extremes.
First of all - you are almost never 'fortunate'. Jobs offers do not fall from the sky usually.
Second - you many live well within your means and then have a car accident, or an ill relative, or something else that will make you into piss poor indebted fella real quick.