There goes another 15% of your net income on train tickets. Eating out every time (because have no time for proper value shopping) and you are basically working in exchange of food, housing, and commute.

Where are you pulling this random 15% number from? And a ridiculous number too. It's more like 2% to 3% unless you spend your entire day traveling.

I just checked how much I pay for travel. My monthly travel expenses is £150 total. That's like between 2% to 3% of someone's net income (depends on how much net income you make).

Do you know it is impossible to 15% of your net income in travel because there is a weekly fare cap: https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/find-fares/capping

Worst case scenario, you are traveling too much every week to max out the fare cap across all travel zones. Your monthly total would be £244. That's like 3% to 6% of your net income. But this is the worst case scenario. If you are spending 6% of your net income on travel, maybe you should reconsider which zone you live in.

So seriously where are you pulling out this ridiculous 15% number from?

As long as you live within Greater London and can use TFL, it's more like 5%

it wasn't even close to 15% of my net income when I was 25

and it certainly isn't now that I'm quite a bit older, and I earn a multiple of what I did then

Using hyperbolic percentages harms your point, it doesn’t help it.

But yeah you’re right dude, we live in a society. We work to support ourselves. What a shocking surprise.