I attribute some of it to the Great Depression. My grandparents grew up during it, and it had an effect on them. They never wanted to get rid of anything because what if times got really hard again? You might be so poor that you couldn't reacquire what you got rid of.

They lived a comfortable middle class life, and that fear never materialized. But they were still prepared in case it did. And they passed that kind of thinking on to the next generation.