The Cost Of Living The American Dream For A Lifetime Has Reached A Whopping 5 Million Dollars

Michael Snyder is the publisher of , The American Dream Blog and The Truth

What in the world has happened to us?  When I was growing up, it was assumed that pretty much everyone in my generation would be able to achieve the American Dream.  But today most of the U.S. population is not living the American Dream, and more people are falling out of the middle class every day.  As I have detailed in previous articles, this is particularly true for Millennials and those in Generation Z.  The collective prosperity of the middle class has been declining for an extended period of time, and now that long-term decline threatens to become a full-blown avalanche.

Borrowing money always creates pain, and since 2009 our leaders in Washington have borrowed and spent 27 trillion dollars that we did not have.  Pumping all of that extra money into the system has had very serious consequences, because now the purchasing power of our dollars has been greatly diminished.

In fact, Newsweek is reporting that the cost of living the American Dream for a lifetime has now reached 5 million dollars…

The American Dream has long symbolized the promise of opportunity, prosperity, and upward mobility. Coined in 1931 by writer James Truslow Adams in The Epic of America, the term described “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”

But nearly a century later, achieving that vision is more expensive than ever. According to new research published by Investopedia, the lifetime cost of attaining the traditional American Dream—including homeownership, retirement, raising children, a wedding, new cars, healthcare, pets, and annual vacations—now totals roughly $5 million. These calculations assume a college-educated, dual-income household capable of sustaining these ambitions over a lifetime.

Is your household going to bring in 5 million dollars over the course of your lifetime?

Sadly, most U.S. households don’t have a prayer of getting anywhere even close to that.

But if you want to live the American Dream for an entire lifetime, that is what it is going to take.

We live at a time when virtually everything is steadily becoming more expensive.

In a previous article, I explained that each month an average family of four spends $996 on groceries, $1,437 on health insurance, $745 on a vehicle payment and $2,259 on a mortgage payment.

Once upon a time, it was quite common for Americans to have large families.

But in our time raising children has become so expensive.

In fact, it is being estimated that the cost of raising two children all the way through college will cost you $876,092…

Raising two children from infancy through college remains one of the costliest undertakings. Using Economic Policy Institute data, Investopedia calculates $650,000 to cover childcare, transportation, meals, and other expenses, with college costs exceeding $230,000 for two children.

“College is more expensive than ever, and many students take on a lot of debt, only to find that their paychecks don’t grow fast enough to pay it off quickly,” Battin said.

According to the Education Data Initiative, the average cost of college is $38,270 per student per year, including books, supplies, and daily living expenses.

This is one of the reasons why our society values money so much at this stage.

The truth is that it takes a giant pile of money each month just to live a normal life.

Older Americans are far more likely to be living a middle class lifestyle right now because they control most of the wealth…

As young buyers scrape together down payments, boomers are sitting on $82 trillion in wealth—more than twice what Gen X has and four times as much as millennials. New research shows the wealth gap has only widened since the 1980s, as older generations saw bigger gains in homeownership and stocks while younger people took on faster-growing mortgage debt. With boomers holding on to large homes and aging in place, younger buyers are struggling to break into a shrinking market.

I know lots of Americans that are over the age of 50 that are successfully living middle class lifestyles in 2025.

But I know of very few Americans that are under the age of 40 that are successfully living middle class lifestyles in 2025.

Over the past several decades, homeownership among young adults has absolutely collapsed.

I shared the following chart that was posted by Nathan Halberstadt on Twitter in a previous article, but I felt that I should share it again in order to illustrate this point…

Just look at that chart.

That is what a long-term economic collapse looks like.

And I don’t think that anybody is even going to attempt to argue that I am wrong about that.

The middle class is being systematically eviscerated.

As older middle class Americans die off, they are not being replaced in sufficient numbers by young adults that are entering the middle class.

In 2025, most of the population is just barely scraping by from month to month.

Debt levels have risen to extremely alarming levels, and so have delinquency rates.

This week, I was deeply saddened to learn that the delinquency rate on subprime auto loans has soared to the highest level ever recorded…

The auto loan landscape is teetering on the edge of chaos as delinquency rates climb to unprecedented heights. Data from the Federal Reserve and Goldman Sachs reveal that subprime auto loan delinquencies have rocketed past 5%, a stark milestone that surpasses the worst days of the 2008 financial crisis.

According to Experian, 30-day-plus delinquencies over the past year have risen 40% among consumers with the lowest credit scores, signaling growing distress among high-risk borrowers. Skyrocketing car prices, coupled with elevated interest rates and mounting economic pressures, are stretching household finances to the breaking point, leading to a surge in missed payments.

Prime auto loan delinquencies, while reaching a 15-year high, but short of the crisis-era peak, suggest a more limited ripple effect among borrowers with better credit.

It is starting to look a lot like 2008 all over again.

And that includes mass layoffs.

Large employers have been eliminating good paying jobs all over the nation, and in many cases these layoffs are being driven by the AI revolution…

The list of companies laying off companies is growing following two years of significant job cuts in tech, media, finance, manufacturing, retail, and energy. According to Business Insider, a World Economic Forum survey found that some 41% of companies worldwide expect to reduce their workforces over the next five years because of the rise of artificial intelligence.

Big companies such as Oracle, CNN, Dropbox, and Block have all previously announced layoffs linked to AI. While Amazon has not reported any job cuts this year, CEO Andy Jassy warned employees in June that the company will likely require “fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today” in the coming years as it increases its adoption of generative AI and AI agents.

If things are this bad now, what will happen once AI can do almost all of our jobs less expensively and more efficiently than humans can?

Of course AI is not the only reason why so many Americans are losing their jobs right now.

As I discussed yesterday, this is the toughest job market that we have seen in ages.

But don’t just take my word for it.  According to the New York Fed, “confidence in the ability to move from one job to another has hit a record low”…

In the latest sign of trouble for the U.S. labor market, confidence in the ability to move from one job to another has hit a record low, according to a New York Federal Reserve survey released Monday.

Respondents to the central bank’s monthly Survey of Consumer Expectations for August indicated a 44.9% probability of finding another job after losing their current one. The reading tumbled 5.8 percentage points from the prior month and is the lowest in the survey’s history dating back to June 2013.

The economy is a mess.

That is very clear.

And it is also very clear that we are moving into an extremely challenging future.

But that doesn’t mean that you should curl up into a fetal position and cry about it.

You were born for such a time as this.

It is when times are the darkest that the greatest lights are needed.

Living the American Dream does not determine whether you are a “success” or not.

You are living at one of the most important moments in all of human history, and you have been given a purpose that only you can fulfill.

Yes, all of the crazy stuff that is happening all around us can be frightening at times, but don’t let all of that noise prevent you from becoming everything that you were created to be.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

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