How did this happen?

“How did we get priced out of the market for our own lives? Many of us had cars and trips and nice clothes and spending money in high school and college. Not only do we want the same things for our children, but the prospect of living worse in midlife than we did in high school seems completely strange and unacceptable. Maybe it’s as simple as that: maybe it’s not our lives we can’t afford but our aspirations, the things we were brought up to believe we could get from life.“

~~ Kevin Canty, “The Dog In Me”

Is this really who we are, who we really want to be?