2 Wealth Comparison Traps That Make Middle-Class Workers Feel Broke
Don't mistake others' successes for your own failures.
That was the message from users in Reddit's r/povertyfinance subreddit, where a 24-year-old poster lamented his financial shortcomings compared to what his father had achieved by his age. The father had multiple properties, a high income and a stable family life when he was young, successes that the younger man credited to the elder’s extreme frugality, noting that he even ripped napkins in half to get double his money’s worth.
If you earn a middle-class income, but you feel like you’re coming up short, avoid falling into these two salary-comparison traps.
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I’ll Never Do as Well as My Parents
Before you compare yourself to your parents, consider that — despite discriminatory laws and practices that excluded many — boomers and older Gen Xers largely enjoyed benefits which younger generations do not. Or as one Redditor put it in the replies: “Times are different. No amount of sliced napkins will get me ahead.”
Here are the disadvantages Gen Z is grappling with that their parents didn't experience:
Unaffordable Education
According to the Education Data Initiative, the average cost of college tuition and fees rose by 93.2% in the last 20 years alone, far outpacing the overall inflation rate since 2005-06. Historically, the statistics are even harsher. In the 1963-64 academic year, college cost an average of $243 per year for public schools and $1,011 for private universities.
Adjusted for inflation, that should be $2,622.28 and $10,909.98 today. However, a year of college in the 2025-26 academic year averages $10,340 for public colleges and $39,307 for private universities.
Unaffordable Housing
According to insurance comparison marketplace The Zebra, 68 out of every 100 Americans could afford to buy a home in 1960 compared to just 43 out of 100 in 2020 — and according to Visual Capitalist, boomers hold 41% of available real estate while millennials only less than two-thirds of what boomers did at their age. The report states it outright: Boomers own a disproportionate share of homes.
Things have only gotten worse since the pandemic — and it’s not because younger generations are lazy or irresponsible. In 1960, the median home cost $11,900 or 2.1 times the median income of $5,600. According to a 2025 Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies report, the median home now costs five times more than the median salary.
Lower Real Wages
According to the Economic Policy Institute, wages rose in line with productivity from 1948 through the mid-1960s, but then began to retreat as corporations directed profits away from labor and back to their shareholders. Between 1979 and 2025, productivity among U.S. workers rose by 92.4% while wages rose by only 33.6%.
The Social Media Wealth Standard: ‘They Shouldn’t Be Richer Than Me’
Middle-class workers should abstain from comparing themselves not only to their parents but also to online influencers who bombard their feeds with unrealistic standards of wealth. TikTok and Instagram offer a daily bombardment of imagery that makes ordinary people believe that the world is doing better than they are — and all those beautiful people frolicking on yachts and dining in the hippest Michelin-starred hotspots takes a negative toll.
New research from the Cyberpsychology Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, titled “They Shouldn’t Be Richer Than Me” and published on ResearchGate, found that “visual wealth exposure increases relative deprivation.”
Relative deprivation is defined as the perception that you’re worse off than you really are compared to a reference standard — in this case, unattainable lifestyles projected by online influencers.
The report found that the more you watch them, the more you compare yourself to them and the more likely you are to feel broke, even if you’re not and to resent the wealthy instead of aspiring and strategizing to improve your own situation.
This article was provided by MoneyLion.com for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal or tax advice.
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