Haley Sacks dreams of owning a home outside New York City, where, once she starts a family, she can choose the wall colors and pick out every doorknob. But this financial content creator, known as Mrs. Dow Jones, also expects that this dream will come at a high cost. For this reason, she says that buying a home should be a lifestyle choice—not a measure of whether someone has achieved financial “success.”
“I’m a millionaire, and I’m proud to rent,” she told Ellie Austin from Fortune on the Fortune Daily program.
This millennial creator, who shares personal finance advice with over 2 million followers, is challenging the money rules that younger generations have long heard from their parents and grandparents. She says, “We’ve always been told that we only become true adults when we own a home. But we need to rethink this, because many of us may never be able to afford one.”
This pressure is colliding with an economic environment that makes these life milestones harder to achieve. To realize the American Dream in a way different from their parents’ expectations, some young people are adjusting their approaches: buying homes that need renovation, piecing together multiple income streams, and even delaying marriage and having children.
Susan Wachter, Professor of Real Estate and Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, previously told Fortune: “They’re not just delaying life’s milestone moments—they’re taking a different path.”
Treat your home as a lifestyle choice.
Even though she is already a millionaire, Sacks says she still wants to reach a certain investment benchmark before buying a home, as she does not view homeownership as an asset.
She said, "I would only consider buying a house as a lifestyle choice, never as an investment."
Sacks believes that instead of using the down payment to buy a home, one could allocate that money as a "reserve fund" for investing in the stock market. She is also the author of the book *Future Rich Person*. She says that investing this money in the stock market is another viable path, but she acknowledges that individuals need to calculate their decisions based on local housing costs.
Sacks said she doesn’t necessarily view a house as an asset because turning it into “a home” requires additional spending beyond the purchase price—everything from wall colors to door handles. She said, “I know it would be a money pit.”
However, choosing to rent as a millionaire is different from renting because one cannot afford to buy a home. Sacks acknowledges that she received family support on her path to building her career. After losing her job in 2018, she worked as a freelance writer using contacts she had built in the media industry and relied on her parents’ help to pay rent. She said, “I never wanted to shy away from this, because it really matters.”
The financial realities of buying a home
The gap between housing costs and income has been widening for years. According to Pew Research Center, between 2019 and 2024, the inflation-adjusted median home value in the U.S. increased by 30%, while the inflation-adjusted median income for households headed by someone under 40 rose by only 9%. By September 2026, to afford a typical home with a 10% down payment and a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, a household would need an annual income of approximately $121,500; to afford a typical rental, an annual income of approximately $77,300 would be required, according to Zillow.
Sacks worries about what happens when people feel that the life they want is becoming unattainable. Young people are turning to prediction markets as a place to accumulate wealth, and she criticizes this marketing approach for packaging participation as a sophisticated form of investment.
She said, "As the American Dream is truly changing, people are eager to find ways to make money and improve themselves."
She believes that the ease of accessing these markets via smartphone makes the prospect of life-changing returns feel within reach, even “addictive.” She says, “It makes you want to impulsively invest your money because you’re so desperate to change your situation that you’re willing to take a gamble.”
Fortune previously reported that a paper by researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago found that when homeownership becomes unattainable, some families may turn to high-risk investments like cryptocurrency as a last resort for building wealth.
This pressure to catch up is one of the reasons Sacks hopes young Americans will reconsider whether buying a home should define financial success. As for her own American dream, that house outside the city is still possible—but only on her own terms.
She said, "If that would make me happy and my investment situation is strong, then maybe I would buy."