[handrous]

Some of it's keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, some of it's that living anywhere that's particularly pleasant to live and also near your employment, is usually expensive because other people want to live there, too, and some of it's that those with the means tend to spend a ton more directly on their kids in hopes of advantaging their kids in life—college tuition, say, so this comes out of the parents' savings rather than being debt on the kids, or tutoring, or "experiences" that their prep school councilor said the admissions guy he's friends with at Stanford really likes to see, or whatever—and, especially in the well-off-but-not-rich range (so there's a kind of trap here where people tend to get stuck moving "up the ladder", burn lots of cash in zero-sum competition with each other over housing that hits the sweet spot between commute time and quality of public schools (those above this level just send their kids to private schools).

Then there's the tendency of US medical or elder care (say, for your not-rich parents) to put a huge dent in one's savings in a relatively short span of time.