Ironically, there is nothing more expensive than being poor. You likely had an unhealthy lifestyle that you never noticed because everyone around you had the same. You were stuck in a job that didn't allow you to become who you wanted to be, but you had so many urgent fires to put out, you had no way out. You wasted so much time and energy commuting every day because living hours away from your workplace was all you could afford. Any signs of ambition got shot down by your fellow "crabs in the bucket" who projected their insecurities on you, and who didn't want you to leave them behind. You've been learning the price of so many things, but you now have to learn the value of the things that matter. You had to unlearn all the lies and wrong beliefs that you were fed in a society where average people (with a bit of money) are always confidently wrong. Especially, you once genuinely believed that the game was fair and that "hard work" alone would get you rewarded. You had to relearn how to not live in the constant fear of being taken advantage of, and how to play games that make you thrive as a person, and not just survive. Especially, you had to rebuild your self-esteem, and understand that you can achieve way more than you think, but only if you have the courage to follow an independent path. And finally, you had to cultivate the mental strength to accept the painful fact that you had a very late start, but it doesn't matter, because you can start climbing today, and you will look back in many years with true confidence and a bit of pride, to the sight of everything you had to overcome to build the life you wanted.