It is worth considering that one of the reasons that people are having more difficulty saving for retirement now than they did, say, 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, is that housing costs are absorbing a larger portion of their wages than used to be the case.
And I'm rather sure that if one looked at the sum of their housing and commuting costs as a percentage of income, that, too would have risen significantly.
The old rule of thumb was to spend no more than 1/4 of one's income on housing. I assume that was construed to include not just the rent or mortgage payment, but also property taxes, condo or association fees, homeowner's or renter's insurance, heating fuel, and utilities such as electricity, water, sewer and telephone. That was probably before TV was a monthly bill, and before an internet connection became, if not essential, nearly so. And it may have been before borrowing more than 80% of the purchase price became common, adding in costs for private mortgage insurance, costing 0.32% to 1.2% of the loan principle. It doesn't take into account the likely costs of maintenance, sometimes estimated at a few percent of the house's value.
Thirty or forty years ago, one couldn't get a standard mortgage whose payments, plus property taxes and homeowners' insurance, exceeded 28% of gross income, or take on a mortgage when the sum of those costs and other debt service (credit card, student loans, car loans) exceeded 35% of income.
Today, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Board, "Qualified Mortgages" generally don't exceed a debt-to-income ratio of 43%. But that doesn't appear to include expenses for utilities.