This is the thing, but I don’t necessarily think it’s entirely generational.
My DH and I mid to late 40s got on the ownership ladder in our 40s, to live within my budget after the 08 crash and the first time in my life I didn’t just walk into a job, I lived with no landline, internet, TV channels, I did have a DVD player I used, I had a prepaid USB stick for emergency internet I topped up very rarely, I moved to an area I could afford rent, I parked my car an hours walk from work to save on commuting I walked the hour to work and back to my car that was parked in a free residential area. I didn’t buy coffee I used instant Nescafé that work offered and packed my lunch. Any makeup I wore was from a clearance bin, clothes off sales racks & charity shops. I’ve had my nails done maybe half a dozen times in my life. It was only after buying our own home I started using a hairdresser. Our house was furnished with 2nd hand furniture for the first 5 years, until we bought bits.
My brother 4 years younger than me thinks I’m tight and spending £2k cash on a car because I don’t want finance or to put myself in debt and it’s embarrassing (guess whose the spoilt golden child). To him it’s all about image, I don’t care about image. My brother bitches that he’s worked hard his who life and dosnt own his own home anymore, yet I own my own house. He dosnt own his home because it’s more important to him and his wife to own the “right” car, pay 4 times our mortgage on rent for the right looking house, buy new clothes from the right brand every month, expensive handbags and makeup, nights out it the best bar’s & restaurants drinking expensive cocktails, he remortgaged a house he bought for pennys with a deposit from both our and his wife’s parents in the 90s, it should have been paid tenfold by the time he sold it, instead he got about £10k from it after paying all the debt he owed on it. Then he complained his in-laws wouldn’t lend him £5k for a business project because his wife hadn’t paid them back for the last £5k she’d borrowed. His words, “what dose it matter to them, they are loaded and my wife’s going to get it when they die anyway”. They are his wife’s feelings too. Their children are just like them. Their 19yo soon actually laughed at his cousin when he found out she’d never worn anything but supermarket trainers. This is on his mums side, my SILs sister is like me.
I have relatives in their 20s who wrk so hard, cut back and when they do get something extra they treat their parents, they never expect anything from their parents.
I do think some things are definitely harder now, it was easy for be to say fine I’m not getting internet, tv, a phone line, I even used a cheap as pre paid brick. But, I never grew up with it, I was lucky to work in a job I had access to the internet, tv in the lunch area with unlimited tea & coffee, biscuits & fruit 3 times a week. We even had showers so I could shower after walking to work. Had I grown up with phones, internet, sky, fancy food and meals I might not have been as good at cutting back.