Well, I will happily throw myself up as an example.
My wife and I make a combined income of over 200K. Part of the problem is that when you start to make more, you also start to spend more (by choice of course, but it also becomes somewhat expected by your partner and yourself internally to have a better standard of living.)
So we bought a nice big house that we thought we would grow into over the next 25 years as a family. No regrets, the house has been great. But it was 500k.
Then there's property tax, insurance, etc. My wife and I both own our vehicles, so that is a positive, but there's still insurance on them. Utilities on the bigger property of course a bit more expensive as well.
When we're both working, we live well. We have a budget and are able to put a significant portion towards savings. But it has still taken us multiple years to build up a net worth of 100k (I was incredibly stoked about this.)
Now, we are having children. When my wife isn't working, we are able to save much less per month, but the EI from mat leave does leave us pretty happy. Things really get tight when the EI ends (so back to work for the Wife!) Small problem though, has anyone seen how much Daycare costs? We barely net any money from my wife working while one child is in daycare, now that the second is on the way... I just don't see it as worthwhile to have her work while we net virtually nothing and have the additional massive headaches of both working with two children.
So it looks like for the forseeable future once EI is out on second kid we will have to be satiated with essentially not adding to our savings and not building net worth outside of the principle payments on the house.
It would be very nice if property values doubled over the next 10 years, but even in an ideal scenario when both my wife and I were working and expenses are low, it would be very very difficult to increase our net worth to the same extent as our parent's generation was able to as property values increased.
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