[xavierlint]

The conclusion I understood from your first comment is something along the lines of: "it's now more important to me to make more money since it affects my longtime girlfriend".

Meanwhile, my gut feelings about this say that I wouldn't want my partner to feel this way about my income status.

[jhap]

Yeah right, so I've been having mixed feelings recently. I'm considering dropping out of my program to get a data science type job in industry or I'm wondering if this just means I'm with the wrong person.

To bring things back to the original question, I think this whole experience has made me skeptical of people who optimize their life around income (past a certain point). At the same time I think chasing a higher income is probably an addictive to some degree, so I understand how people can fall into that and I think it might change people (my girlfriend obviously was not like this when we met).

My takeaway as a low-income person, is that I think high-income people will always dismiss me if I make these types of statements. "Of course he thinks this way, he's just a poor a student!". It's this kind of tautology that makes it impossible to deny being an alcoholic, etc. As far as I'm concerned, from my current position, it is impossible to persuade anyone that is dismissive about low-income people to think otherwise.