People want the nice things their parents had, but not on the same timeline. They don't realize that nice things take a while to accumulate.

Yes my parents drive a Prius. But growing up in a family with 5 other siblings, they pretty much drove beaters. And our house started with, as we so fondly called them, the seven ugly carpets of the world. And those were slowly replaced over time. The house we lived in until I was one had slanted kitchen floors - just throw a towel at the correct wall if you spilled.

The point is that our parents affluence isn't the result of a general rise in affluence - it's accumulated. But we often don't think about that when making our early financial decisions.