Good reminiscing of Old School values. We need that today, but unfortunately the Old School has permanently closed…

You are a saint. I detest clutter.:ho:

If you earn 250k per year for 20 years or 167k per year for 30 years you will have earned the 5 million for your American dream. With earnings from sales of real estate and possible income from sale of a business it seems like something that can be acheived.

That's assuming you spend $0 on things such as food, clothing, shelter, utilities, cellular service, transportation, property tax, income tax, or anything else.

I mean I suppose you can do that, if you have someone else to pay all your bills and buy you all your needs for 20 years.

It’s not quite that difficult. You do not need $5 million at once but over time. And you certainly don’t need it at the end of your life. What you need is cash flow to spend at various times of your life that adds up to $5 million by the end of it - at least that is how I am interpreting the chart.

If you can't live the dream on a quarter mil per year, you have a spending problem, not an income problem.

Go read The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley

And the total cost will contine to accelerate as the cost of education has been growing faster than inflation for several decades, and health care / insurance is also grosing faster than inflation

I sometimes wonder if a college education will be necessary for so many when AI gets up and running full stream.

It depends on your idea of the American Dream.

With some folks it's 2 kids, a big house with a picket fence and a big yard, two newer-model cars, weekends out, never feeling the need to cut coupons or download savings apps, twice-yearly vacation trips during school breaks until the kids are old enough for summer camp, and then taking those summers with just the spouse, then sending the kids off to college, retirement at age 55, all bills paid forever, a month-long trip to Europe and 14-day cruise on alternating years, a summer house in the Hamptons or at the edge of one of the Great Lakes, twice-monthly mani-pedis.

With some folks it's owning a few acres of farmable land, raising six kids and a bunch of chickens for meat and eggs and goats for milk and cheese, and growing tons of vegetables, and a huge farm house with a root cellar and a wrap-around porch where you can watch the kids play with the dog in the front of the homestead.

With some folks, it's having a tiny home in a wooded tiny home community with solar power and compostable toilets, riding your bicycle or walking to everything you need, a community kitchen, and a health clinic less than a couple of miles away for emergencies.

And with some folks it's having a sturdy one-bedroom shack and a custom surfboard near the beaches somewhere along the southern California coast.

For me, it was - no kids, either staying in Connecticut or moving to an adobe home near Albuquerque, having enough money that I didn't have to wonder which I had to give up: a new roof or a hip replacement.

Exactly. So like I said above, but reframed, if you can't retire after earning a quarter mil per year, it's a YOU problem. Lower your expectations.

But you weren't making a quarter mil (assumption based on comments you have made publicly) so that argument is irrelevant to my point.

I think the point of the article is that a typical American’s expectations over a life-time can be expensive. However, most if us are happy, because the most important expectations are often not monetary.