People in the 1950s used to buy much smaller houses. Owning a small (13 inch) black and white TV used to be a big deal. A computer costs millions of dollars (not accounting for inflation!) and filled large buildings. Women often didn't get a drivers licenses at all, and even they did there was only one family car so they needed to drive their husband into work if they wanted to use the car. Cars needed a lot of maintenance for things like the points, and they didn't really last long unless you rebuilt the engine which most people did. You had one phone in your house and it was a party line shared with your neighbors.

In the 1970s houses were already getting larger, but not to today's. Nearly everyone had one 19 inch color TV, but few two. Only a few weird people had a computer in the house, and it connected to the TV for a monitor, for the rest a computer took up large buildings but many people had a terminal to use it via some time sharing system. Most women had a drivers license, but families only had one car unless the woman worked outside the house (which was most by this time). Cars with advances like electronic ignition cars need much less maintenance, but if your car was about to reach 100,000 miles you gathered your best friends to go for a drive to see it at all zeros: you had to add oil before you left (in a cloud a blue smoke), rebuilding engines was still common, but not something most people did. You had a private phone in your house.

Today most new houses are the size of what would have been considered upper middle class in the 1950s. Today people consider it normal to have a TV in every room. Today everybody has a computer in their home. Most families have a car per driver, and those cars often last 300,000 miles (though many people don't keep them that long). Everybody has a phone/computer in their pocket, few have them in the house at all.

There are a lot more things I could point out that have advanced. If you were willing to live like 1950 or 1970 you could get by on a lot less money.