And the resulting answer is fairly simple: They literally had more money, relatively speaking, for that sort of stuff.
Why? Well, that's complicated, and there's a lot of subjectivity in the judgment of it.
Some of it is that a higher "standard of living" means that while your housing today may be more expensive than the "same house" 70 years ago, it isn't the "same house". As a simple example, your wiring is a lot nicer, but that cost some money. (This comes to mind because of the horror stories my father is telling me about the renovating he is having to do to his parent's house to get it on the market.) One could write books on the ways your house is not actually the "same house", mostly in good ways.
Some of it some issues related to wealth disparity and the way more of our wealth generation isn't going into our pockets, for a wide variety of reasons, with a wide variety of subjective valuations attached to those reasons.
Some of it is that they simply didn't have the ability to spend money on what we do now; many goods and services we use today didn't even exist then.
I'm trying to avoid significant value judgments in this post, even though I have opinions all day long on these matters, because the simple answer to your question is just, they literally had a larger proportion of their income to spend on such things.
But even with that perspective, it still begs the question that, given a healthy dose of disposable income, why did so many people seem to choose a $1500 minor TV upgrade or a new $3000 couch instead of, I don't know, an extravagant European vacation? Eating at any restaurant you want whenever you want? It's really that divide that baffles me - the experience-spenders (me, hi) versus the stuff-buyers. But maybe that's more of an urban/suburban divide than a generational divide.
Also, if you were in the US in the 1960s, I can well understand why "eating in any restaurant you wanted" would not necessarily have appealed much... the food of the era was... adequate.
I think the experiences were not as readily available versus the stuff as you may be thinking. To the extent that they were available, they were taken. Piling your family into the station wagon and driving around for three weeks used to be a lot more common, I think. But that's not "an extravagent European vacation". The relative prices of things have changed a lot in the past century.
(And to be clear, I mean, relative to each other, e.g., "how many years in college is a trip to Europe", not in absolute inflation terms. A thing that has gone up a bit faster than inflation is still relatively cheaper than a thing that has gone up way faster than inflation.)
- Inherited furniture or gifted furniture from parents
- Recovered / restored furniture
- Deal finding, estate sales, neighbors moving
Aside from electronics this accounts for most of the furniture in my house. My wife and I have been home owners for about 15 years now and we bought our first chair set in a store this year.
Prior to that, we bought a bedroom set from Rooms to Go when we got our first house.
While I don't agree with much of what he says, some things I've heard Dave Ramsey say have really stuck with me. One is that setting a budget isn't about taking away your freedom, but rather, getting it back.
But this article is basically about how having a budget probably makes you less stressed than not having a budget, which is far less interesting in my mind that how and why people spend their money, and the generational differences.