sounds like you need to learn to live more frugal, then.
learning to not consume blindly but instead responsibly is just as important as saving money.
Although I'm not living the grand life. I don't own a car, I don't have children or crazy expensive hobbies. I cook every day, buy vegetables at the farmer market. I don't drink at all, or consume drugs, or smoke. I don't go out a lot. Once a week maybe.
Beside I find it very peculiar that my parents could live the life my friends live, yet could afford children, have saving and now have a retirement.
A 30 years old single person with no children an a job that doesn't have a loan or mad spending habits should not have to choose between savings and pleasures.
But yes, I don't deny I could definitely tune down my spending.
I'm not in a difficult situation myself. I don't have saving, but I have a nice life. I'm one of the person who can give away the 500 €. I'm more concerned that so many people around me can't.
While there is definitely an attitude issue here, it can't be the only one. I can believe there is a difference in the education my parents had. I can't, however, they were so much better planners than my friends are.
I understand you know that yourself, but the past is the past - my grand parents were suffering through wars.
But it would be unfair to blame entirely the current generation for their situation. I don't think another one would have ended up in such an entire different situation. Life does cost more. Society does push to consume.
I think it's just that given that the economy is probably going to be shittier and shittier, we should take the opportunity of our current still nice lives to prepare.
But yeah, we don't.
The truth is - you are born - now play the cards you are dealt. If you complain about the cards - then you are already about to lose before the game even started. Maybe next card dealt to you is Leukemia - now you will complain to yourself "why me of all the people - what have I done to deserve this?" while you wish your only problems still were being in a financially worse position than your parents. I think that's what you are doing.
Retirement on the other hand...
However, money is not everything. Living is France is very sweet, and the US lifetyle is peculiar. Also, I'm currently an independent dev, and the salary implied I signed a 5 years contract. That's a lot of constraints for me.
But yeah, compared to the US, dev are not well valued here. And you should see in Spain...