The issue is that costs of living are completely out of control compared to when our parents were our age. Everything keeps going up at an exponential rate. Hydro, natural gas, taxes, house prices/rent, insurance, groceries, gas for car. Everything. But the job market is slowly diminishing and salaries are stagnant. They raised minimum wage here to $15 and it has companies freaking right out. They can more than afford it, but they don't want to pay that much because it cuts into their profits, so now they are laying off people, cutting benefits etc.
On the flip side, as far as houses go, yeah they are more expensive, but the interest now is also way lower than it was in their day, so there's that I guess. My parents paid 80k for their house which was built when I was born. that same house now goes for close to 300k.
I consider myself lucky for having a job where I usually hit around 80k each year (depends on OT, etc) but lot of people arn't as fortunate as reality is there arn't that many good jobs that pay this much around here. What's crazy is even at 80k I should be making tons of extra money to put into savings but reality is I'm more or less just making it. I have a couple hundred bucks left over at the end of the month. All the bills eat into the rest.