https://www.wsj.com/articles/your-parents-financial-advice-is-kind-of-wrong-11568367000
If you find a paywall, here are some tidbits:
Single family homes have been getting bigger, while family sizes are getting smaller. If the typical single family home is more expensive than in 1980, it’s at least in part because the typical single family home has gotten so much larger.
https://money.cnn.com/2014/06/04/real_estate/american-home-size/
But nowadays one can carry a computer in their pocket and take photos with it… 
Yes but existing home prices are also much higher, even those that have not been expanded. While there is always upward pressure in areas with newer homes, prices are up everywhere. However, this is certainly skewed by prices in places like NYC and suburbs, silicon valley and surrounding area (where a starter home with 2 bedrooms is over $1 million) and Seattle.
On the other hand, my mortgage rate in the 80s was nearly 10 percent compared to today’s low rate .
My college costs and later living expenses were far higher than my parents’, too. Decades ago. I’d bet my parents’ costs were higher than their parents’.
And though my rent was 1/4 what my first kid paid, her starting salary was almost 4x what my first professional job paid.
Neither of my kids took out $165k in college loans.
Our rents was super cheap when we had my 1st apartment after law school. The rent S pays is significantly higher than our mortgage monthly payments were. He has a 1-bedroom in Arlington VA.
He’s looking to buy a place but housing prices in areas he’s interested in are very high for tiny, tiny places.
A person starting out in their first job out of grad school/internship in my field makes a salary probably 4-5X what I earned in my fist job. The internships pay probably 6X what my internship paid. Its all relative.
Yes, our mortgage rate was about 11%. I remember thinking that my husband’s student loan rate of 8% was so low! We lived in our first house for 7 years and sold it for the same price we bought it for.
We had to send out almost 300 resumes to get our first engineering jobs, 2,500 miles away from home. It wasn’t all roses back then. And we have stood in unemployment lines. I tell my kids that life’s tough, but you just keep trucking.
Wow!!!
Definitely lower interest rates which have helped with mortgages, but also depressed the amount savings earn (if they aren’t in the market). I got to go away to college in part due to the high interest rates my parents got on their relatively meager savings.
Yes, I remember having a 12% mortgage and 9% CDs. I also remember being able to earn about $1000 for the entire summer in a good year to use toward college expenses. S made 5x that in his engineering internship.
Right. I was proud of my $700 from summer earnings. My kids made $3500 as camp counselors. But earlier, my first mortgage was 16%, bad timing.
It’s not bad advice to our kids to save and invest. But a lot of that is distracted by computer and cell wants, web, online accounts, online purchasing, goods like expensive tvs, and other discretionary outlays.
We bought our first home in 1981, when mortgage rates were 17%. We had an adjustable mortgage at a lower rate, but knew we had to be out of there before our rate went up. My parents probably thought we were crazy. One of my millennials is paying $2400/mo for a small, but brand new, 2 bedroom apartment. I hope they are able to buy something soon.
First year tuition room and board at Yale in 1978 was less than $7,500. It barely broke $10,000 my senior year. $72K+ this year. My FISL loan back then was 7%, and I thought it was a bargain. My parents’ newly constructed 4bdr home on a 1/4 acre lot in suburbia in 1974 only cost $36K. A comparable house probably goes for 10x that amount today. S’s offer for a summer internship in finance (annualized) as an undergrad is almost double my starting salary at a “Wall Street” law firm in the mid 80’s. So I guess it is all relative. It does seem though that money is less valuable/more inflated in certain sectors (and geography) of our economy than others.
Health care is also way more expensive.
Housing in the midwest is still very reasonable, especially at the present interest rates. Laughably so compared to the areas I came from (Vancouver/ Seattle/Toronto). You can a very good to excellent education at Big 10 State flagships for a reasonable cost, and a perfectly good one at a State school. All bets are off at a private school, of course.
If you insist on living in CA, Seattle, Boston, NYC, DC, etc. then ya, it’s gonna cost.
The Canadian tuitions are still very reasonable, especially for Canadian citizens/permanent residents.