Lifestyle inflation is very sneaky. I grew up fairly poor (and felt it), like trailer trash in a back-woods area known for potsmoking hicks poor, and now that I'm a "starving college student" with a decent PT job I feel pretty rich most of the time. I don't have the nicest apartment and I've parked my car for the year because the bus is cheaper and (usually) good enough. But even though I'm still not even middle class, I've noticed lifestyle inflation so I'm actively working to combat it. (Especially since I predict my income probably going up as I graduate and go FT year-round, I want the good habits now.)

Firstly I try to be frugal. Some people think this means cutting coupons for everything and not spending any money on fun things, but really it just means not spending money on things you don't care about, so that you can spend money on things you do care about instead. The exact categories there are different for everyone and will change over time and as your situation/environment changes. For me, I chose to give up the car so I could have more wiggle room wrt general spending money (eating out, coffee), and could afford a new laptop and glasses. Other people will bring their own lunches and coffee so they can afford a vacation, or cut down on buying electronics so they can live in a nicer place. Sometimes I fail at frugality -- recently I've spent a lot of money on videogames that I don't really enjoy and won't play much, when I already have unplayed ones and games with lots of leftover replay value. So for the next month, I'm not spending any money on videogames, and after that I'll try to think more carefully about whether I'll enjoy a game and whether I actually have a small enough pile of games to get around to it soon, rather than whether I can afford the game. Because for any individual game, the answer to that question is always YES, so it's not a helpful question to ask myself. You mentioned you drive nice carS -- does this mean you own/lease more than one at once? You can only drive one at a time, so unless you have a family with seriously incompatible schedules or are a hardcore car aficionado, that might be something you could "afford" rather than something you truly need/want.

Secondly I try not to own too much stuff, especially stuff I don't use. Owning stuff costs time and money, but we don't always see that because the costs are hidden and sprinkled around all over the place. If you're using your big house mostly to store a big bunch of stuff you've accumulated, you are paying your hard-earned money to heat your own personal junkyard. When you move house, you pay to move the junk. When the junk breaks you pay to fix it or to replace it -- because by keeping it you've already convinced yourself you "need" it, even if it's something you never/rarely use or whose function could easily be replaced by some other tool you have. So I try to purge the things I own regularly, keeping only the things I use and want. I did a big purge last summer and I'll probably do another one this spring. It can be hard, especially if you've been raised to believe that owning stuff is a good thing, or that "you'll never know when you need it", but it feels really good when you're done. This doesn't mean I live in a minimalist apartment with no stuff, of course. It just means I have a somewhat-smaller, carefully-curated collection of stuff -- stuff I'm consciously willing to actually heat and move and repair and replace.

Sorry if getting money advice from a poor college student seems insulting/silly. It probably is at least a bit silly, but it seems like you and I (and lots of others) have the same problem on different scales, so the things that help me might help you, if you want.