I make significantly less than that and make more money than the median in both my own country (a decent bit more) and the US (a lot more). It is mathematically impossible for expenses that high to be the norm.

If you have kids or other dependents like elderly or disabled family members in need of support, I’m sure it can get very expensive very fast, and it’s quite obvious the average american does not make enough money. But $250 a day is an insane number for an “average” person. Even if you pay 3k a month in rent idk how you would get to that number.

Fwiw my own recurring daily expenses (disregarding things like saving for holidays and such bc otherwise it’s just my income) including saving up money as a safety net/for retirement are around 70€. More than triple that seems pretty unfathomable to me for a single person even in a country with even higher cost of living.

Not a single person in my life has ever had an issue with the fact that i prefer to be texted and reserve phone calls for more immediate issues. My time belongs to me and no one else so I have no obligation to answer people, and text is faster to parse for me and always has a protocol available if I need it later.

Calling someone isn’t disrespectful. Calling someone that has made it clear they do not want to be called except for emergencies is. In my case I’d just mute all calls from them after it happens the second time.