I was born in 1968. I remember at the time thinking that homes in Southern California where I lived at the time were out of reach financially. Finally, with gre

I was born in 1968. I remember at the time thinking that homes in Southern California where I lived at the time were out of reach financially. Finally, with great struggle I managed to buy a house for $149K in 1993. Four years later after an extended period of unemployment I ended up selling the house in a short sale for $135K. I occasionally will look that house up on Redfin and last I checked the last sale was for $775K. My salary has gone up since 1993, but not by a factor of 5. Tuition, books, fees, room and board at the Claremont Colleges where I did my undergrad at the end of the 80s was around $20K all in. It's now around $80K. Again, salaries have gone up since the 80s, but not by a factor of 4. The maximum subsidized student loan amount when I was an undergrad was $2000/year so you'd end up with $8K of debt after graduation. Now the limit ranges from $3500–5500 based on year of school for a total of $19000. I had a contracting job programming right out of college at $30/hr. According to the Google, a starting salary for a computer programmer now is $55,036. That's not 2.5x more than I had, but maybe I was paid more than average back then because I was special? (On the flip side, I was stuck at that pay rate for 3 years because I didn't know any better.) My first car in 1991 was a Mazda Protege. I paid $11,000 for it. The equivalent model today is the Mazda 3 which has a MSRP starting at $20,650 although the Google indicates that I can expect to pay at least $26K if I actually want to buy one.