If you can teach me how to live in southern California with less than 700 a month I'd love to know how. Most the time I've sat around 500. Add in fees from Patreon and PayPal and its averaged 465. I made more at little Caesar's when I was 16 working part time. I've gone from a 1200 dollar PC to a 7,000 dollar pc with a 3090 strictly by saving the money and re-investing right back into the pc. If I had money saved from my job making iced coffee for ungrateful people all day, I put it into classes on lighting and color correcting. Add in 54 dollars a month for the adobe sweet and I'm even more out of pocket. And try making a game while being trashed on all the time and feeling like nothing will ever be enough. I may not have been the most motivated dev for a game I used strictly to teach me how to even make one in the first place, but I also don't take money and run.
When I broke my Collar bone and had to go on disability, I had to sell a lot of personal belongings just to make my insurance payment for my car. Believe me, I am not rolling in cash.
If you can't see a difference from the beginning of my dev journey to now, then I don't know, maybe I have failed in terms of trying to grow my skills. But I'd like to think I learned a lot, and I've gotten to meet some super cool people along the way, so I'm happy with what I've got.