Such example of increased costs of increased standards of living:

Look at the additional safety requirements put onto households, not only in the car, but also in the house, which cost extra money to pay for such things. While such things do help save lives and cuts down on injuries, it’s still an overall increased cost (especially initial start up costs).

Look at the additional things we about need to get, cell phones (put on by society), a computer at home with internet connection (put on by society for doing various things). Some people apply the argument that such items as these help save on total costs. If you get such items for business purposes, I can see such argument fitting, but for getting for within your personal home, in most cases, I don’t see such argument as being advantageous. That is, unless you have a substantial amount of money to manage which by managing such money, you either save or increase your investments by at least that amount of money as what it cost you to get the system and internet, then it won’t be of any real savings to you.

In my case, I do use the computer obviously, which I use Excel for my household’s finances, which in some respect did save me a lot of money early on. But then how I use Excel, most people wouldn’t even dare to attempt to set it up as most people only use computers like how they use a car where as I’m like the software mechanic with an Accounting education to the system as a mechanic is to a car at the shop. 90% to 95% of the software stuff including programming, databases, spreadsheets and what not, I learned on my own. Many say I’m gifted in that regards cause of how quick I pick up on the software side of computers. For me, I say it’s 50% gifted (me being think logically is the part gifted to me) and 50% earned. My learning disability primarily in language forced me to learn the art of memorization to conquer English, which how I ended up learning English via logics and memorization is how most people in programming end up learning programming languages. As a result of that, once I was introduced to computers in the 7th grade, I just took off like nothing.

Anyhow, just be sure you have your bases covered including covering for inflation and increased costs from increased standards of living over time.