Tropes'R'us - do movie tropes influence our way of thinking

[Homeless Nutter]

Money is very inaccurately depicted in movies and TV. Poor and middle-class people on the screen pretty much universally live way beyond their means. They live in huge apartments, located in highly sought-after areas, they wear expensive clothes, they buy top-brand food and household products. They often travel to faraway places, or make extravagant purchases, in order to facilitate some minor plot. They make disastrous financial decisions - with virtually no long-lasting consequences. All the while - you almost never see them actually working.

And almost nobody ever loses their house, or has to pay off debts for decades. Nobody has to move back in with their parents, or becomes homeless. In the world of popular modern fiction - you can only fail so far, before you magically bounce back, so that at the end of an episode you are in the same position, you were in at the beginning of it.

I believe that's one of the reasons, why many people grow up with unrealistic expectations of what kind of lifestyle their skills and education should be able to afford them and consequently fall into debt and/or feel perpetually unhappy about their perceived lack of professional success.