I simply don’t believe this is as hard as everyone makes it out to be. I still think it’s an issue of heightened expectations.

There is a strong belief that everyone should be able to afford a place to live, alone, in some place with a convenient location (downtown or within walking distance of transit), and then after a few years you should be able to buy a house.

When I grew up, I had multiple roommates, and we’d carpool whenever possible. I scrimped and saved pretty hard to get a down payment saved up. By my day’s standards, it wasn’t crazy to cook 99% of your own food, brew all your coffee at home or the office (hopefully free), get any free food you can possibly convince your employer to give you, and have one TV everyone fights over. My dad made his own “furniture” (until my mom moved in and smacked some sense into him…). My mom grew up sleeping in an hot attic with 3 siblings, because the other 5 siblings took up all available rooms.

I’m not saying life shouldn’t improve each generation, but I think people are expecting it to improve way faster than it actually is.

Expectations are a factor, but also practicality. Back then you could get a decent job with a high school education or even less. If you had a good job, you could afford a house and a car with one income.

My uncle worked in the GM plant for many years, owned a nice house and a car and a bass boat and is comfortably retired. His wife never worked. I remember my aunt telling us that we shouldn’t get him books for Christmas presents because he couldn’t read very well.

Now to do this you need both parents working. They both need degrees that need paying off, and they need to live in a major metro area, because they both need to have good paying, specialized jobs. In the old days you might move to some little town so the dad could work at some factory, but now the mom has to also find a job in her specialty, so you need to be in a big city to find jobs for both of them within commuting distance.

In this context, everyone is bombarded with social media telling them that they should have fancy cars and houses and vacation in Bali, and they’re stretched to the breaking point and can’t have any kids.

It doesn't matter how much you cook at home if wages haven't kept up with house prices (in australia anyway) - https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/the-charts-that-show-why...

I very recently did the math and with my CS job (and my wife's salary) in our early 40s (so both full time for at least 15 years) we could about now have bought the kind of house my parents bought when I was a kid - if it were the same price, just adjusted for inflation. But it's three times that adjusted cost. (Not the US, Germany)

Not sure that is a heightened expectation, you're just out of luck if you don't already have a house. And people in their twenties just have it even worse.