When my husband and I were just finishing graduate school we moved to a small coastal town in Maine that was between the two towns where we each worked. We became friends with a group of couples our age (mid 20s to early 30s) who had various types of jobs available in that small town (teachers, country store owner, weekly paper editor, etc.) none which were high paying at all. Yet, the cost of living in this little town was not low. Several of these couples were not too far out of college, from photos had opulent weddings, had beautiful homes, nice cars, and many only had one working parent as most had young kids at the time. We were living in a one bedroom walk up above a store downtown, cheap rent, starting to pay back loans, just making ends meet and trying to get our feet under us after all those years of both being in grad school. We wondered how these couples could afford this lifestyle looking at them through our glasses of course. Turns out, several of these couples came from very wealthy families and they got A LOT of help from their families from paying for college, the weddings, buying the homes, cars, and whatever.
The saddest part not one of those couples is still married today, In fact, many of those marriages broke down during the few years that we lived there.