Looking around the average suburban neighborhood, replete with 4 bedroom 1 1/2 bath houses, 2 car garages loaded up with newer vehicles sporting in-dash DVD players, it certainly appears that some of us are "better off" than our parents before us. But according to the Wall Street Journal, this isn't the case.
Men in their 30s today earn 30% less than their counterparts in the mid-70s. Obviously, total household income is higher in families where there are two breadwinners, but so are daycare costs and cost of housing as a percentage of total income (I'm not even talking about gas prices).
As our expectations of the good life change and expand (just look at the size of homes now as compared to 20 years ago), it is also more difficult to measure how we are faring compared to our parents. Personally, I think we're better off from a material standpoint, but in general our debt-to-income ratio is horrid and our material expectations have gotten totally out of hand.
How does your family's income/lifestyle compare to your parents?
