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💸The American Dream Now Costs $4.4M: Can You Afford It?

💸The American Dream Now Costs $4.4M: Can You Afford It?

The TRUE Cost of "Making It" in America

Kartik Vyas & Gen Kimura
March 06, 2025

What’s in This Week’s Issue…

Good morning. For decades, the American dream was simple: Work hard, buy a home, raise a family, and retire comfortably.

But what if that dream was never designed to last?

Today, achieving middle-class security isn’t just difficult — it’s nearly impossible for young Americans.

So this week…

🏆 The Big Play: The True Cost of the American Dream
💪 The Power Move: How to control your reputation (strategically)
💵 Follow the Money: How BlackRock Just Bought The Panama Canal Port

-GEN

🏆 The Big Play

The biggest money power story of the week.

Millennials vs Boomers: Who Had It Harder?

The Statue of Liberty and the Making of the American Dream

The American Dream was built on one promise: If you work hard, you’ll make it.

But what happens when that promise starts feeling like a rigged system?

The American Dream now has a price tag of $4.4 million. The average American earns about $2.3 million over their lifetime.
Somehow this math doesn’t add up. And it’s not by accident.

So, what made the American Dream unaffordable? Here are 3 main parts to it:

1. Homeownership is No Longer a Middle-Class Reality

Buying a home has long been the heart of the American Dream. But it stopped working along the way.

In 1980, you could buy a home for $47,200. Today, it will cost you $431,000.
Back then you could afford a house with just 3x your salary. Today, it’s 7-8x your salary.

That’s how homeownership became a luxury.

So Gen Z and millennials aren’t “bad with money“ - they just got priced out even after turning to debt.

2. The Debt Trap is the New Norm

For most young Americans, debt isn’t a choice.

Student loans: 43 million Americans still owe a price for their degree. This has pushed the total student debt to $1.77 trillion, which was around $500 billion in 2006.
Credit cards: An average American has a credit card debt of around $7,000, which was only around $500 in the 80s.
Car Ownership: The average cost of a new car was around $6,800 in the 70s. It is now $48,000.

It has become a survival necessity.

People are forced to rely on debt to keep up with costs, all while wages have stayed stagnant.

3. Wages Haven’t Kept Up (But costs keep climbing)

Wages are the real problem that is keeping the young out of reach of the American Dream.

In 1973, a typical man with a full-time job earned $53K (adjusted for inflation).
That number has barely moved since. Most working Americans earn just about $59K a year today.
That’s only a modest increase in 50 years. But housing, education, and childcare costs have jumped exponentially.

The young Americans are often called lazy, financially irresponsible or worse, TikTok addicts.

But if you pay attention, they’re struggling because the system was designed this way.

So how do you break out of this cycle?

Like most people born in America, I tried chasing the American Dream.

At first, it felt like I was on the right track - good salary, career growth, stability. But over time, I realized something: it’s impossible to get rich working a job.

The money wasn’t bad, but the trade-off was clear. More hours. More stress. And no real control over my future.

So I started building my YouTube channel on the side first to see if I really wanted to do this full-time:

Kept my full-time job while learning new skills at night
Worked weekends to grow my side hustle instead of wasting time on distractions
Avoided dumb money mistakes so I could reinvest in my future.

For three years, I worked two full-time jobs. Only when my channel made sense financially, I made the jump.

📌So, the American Dream isn’t dead. But you’re not just competing with your peers anymore. You’re competing with the world. Build something on the side first slowly and sustainably, and play the long game.

💪 The Power Moves

Playbook for understanding the game of power.

Why Your Reputation Matters More Than You Think

Robert Greene and his book, The 48 Laws of Power

“So much depends on reputation — guard it with your life.“

Robert Greene

Law 5 from Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power says that reputation is your most valuable power.

I learned this the hard way.

Last year, I took a gambling sponsor for my doomsday preppers video. I took it because the money was good, but the comments showed a lot of people did not like it:

I realized that it was not worth the risk of undermining the trust I have with you. It taught me how the reputation I have carefully built over the years can be cheapened with a careless decision.

With what I do and the topics I talk about, trust is the last thing I can lose with y’all.

So, it’s important to remember how it takes years to build a reputation and a moment to destroy it.