Depends which generation you mean - my parents are in their 80s now so maybe older than the parents you are thinking of. But their financial situation was very different, some elements easier than now, a lot were much harder. So for example my mum's family is quite posh but she had a chamber pot and an outside privy for all the time she grew up, plus she had rationing of food from the age of 5 until after she left home. She didn't eat a cooked tomato until she was in her early 20s - food was unbelievably plain compared to what we are used to - boiled potatoes most of the time as far as I can make out, with macaroni as an exotic alternative. She won a scholarship to university but otherwise couldn't have gone, there were certainly no grants and no loans either and a tiny proportion of the country ever did a degree.
She and my dad were rich compared to most in their early marriage but didn't own a house for many years, as was normal then. They had a cooker I think but no fridge, no washing machine, of course no phone, no central heating, nappies and underwear all hand boiled, though they could afford to send shirts and bedding to the laundry which was cheaper then, I couldnt' afford that now.
They had the oil shock in the early 70s - by that time they were very rich with a house they owned and all sorts of consumer goods but there was no spare cash once oil prices and inflation went up. I remember having fish fingers every night for a week, and boiled potatoes came back in a big way. They barely drank, never went out and this was quite normal - the first time I ate out with my parents was when I got my A-level results. My mother worked far harder than I ever will through all this time and I can't help laughing when I hear people say how hard things are now/fast pace of life etc, when I think of her life - up at the crack of dawn, collecting eggs for breakfast, cooking for us all, knitting us sweaters on the train to work, doing her work, then back home to us lazy ungrateful lot, cooking again, visiting elderly relatives, writing letters and paying the bills, sorting out the veg garden, feeding the hens and falling into bed about ten.
Yes she got a pension - though only by the skin of her teeth as she had to change jobs at the wrong time - but she lived on very little for years. Yes they did buy a house and I think it's wrong that it's so hard to do that, but to be honest they worked so hard for it that I sometimes wonder if they really valued it that much. Anyway my dad pissed it away Without wanting to sound like a bitter baby boomer, I think a few days of the life my mother lived quite happily as a young married woman would kill me off... and maybe a few other people.