Haley Sacks would love to own a house outside New York City once she has a family. She wants to choose the paint colors, the handles on every door. But the financial creator known as Mrs. Dow Jones also expects that dream will be expensive. Because of that, she says buying a home should be a lifestyle choice, not a measure of whether someone has made it financially.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a millionaire, and I proudly rent,\u201d she told Fortune\u2019s Ellie Austin on Fortune Daily<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The millennial creator<\/a>, who shares personal finance advice with more than 2 million followers, is challenging the money rules younger generations have long heard from their parents and grandparents. \u201cWe all still have this idea in our head that when we own a home, that\u2019s when we\u2019re going to be an adult,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we have to rethink that because many of us are never going to own a home.\u201d<\/p>\n That pressure is colliding with an economy that has made those milestones harder to reach. Some young adults are adapting<\/a> by buying fixer-uppers, scrapping together multiple sources of income, and even putting off marriage and children, all to make the American Dream work for them\u2014even if it looks different from what their parents imagined.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not just postponing life markers,\u201d Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Wharton School, previously told Fortune<\/a>. \u201cThey\u2019re also taking a different path.\u201d<\/p>\n A home as a lifestyle choice\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite her millionaire status, Sacks said she still wants to reach a certain benchmark in her investments before buying property, because she doesn\u2019t see owning a home as an asset.<\/p>\n \u201cI would only buy as a lifestyle choice, never as an investment choice,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The amount that she would put toward a down payment is better used as a \u201cnest egg\u201d for investing in the stock market, argued Sacks, who is also the author of Future Rich Person. Investing that money in the stock market offers another path, she said, but she did acknowledge that people need to run the numbers on local housing costs depending on where they live.<\/p>\n Sacks said she doesn\u2019t necessarily think of a house as an asset because it involves pouring in more money than just the sale price to make it personal: from the paint colors to the handles on every door. \u201cI know that it\u2019s going to be a money trap,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Choosing to rent as a millionaire, however, is different from renting because buying is out of reach. Sacks acknowledged that her own path to building a business included family support. After losing her job in 2018, she did freelance writing through connections she had made in media and paid rent with the help of her parents. \u201cI never want to, you know, not talk about that stuff because it\u2019s so important,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The finances of buying a home<\/p>\n The gap between housing costs and incomes has been building for years. Between 2019 and 2024, the median U.S. home value rose 30% after inflation, while median income for households headed by someone under 40 grew just 9% in inflation-adjusted terms, according to Pew Research Center<\/a>. By September 2026, a household needed to earn about $121,500 a year to afford a typical home, assuming a 10% down payment and a 30-year fixed mortgage, compared with roughly $77,300 for a typical rental, according to Zillow<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sacks worries about what happens when people feel the life they want is slipping out of reach. One venue where younger people are looking to build wealth are prediction markets, which she criticized as marketing that makes participation sound like sophisticated investing.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the American dream really changing, people are so desperate for a way to make money and to advance themselves,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Easy access to those markets on a phone can make the possibility of a life-changing payout feel immediate and \u201caddictive,\u201d she argued. \u201cIt makes you want to impulsively just put money into it because you want to change your situation so badly that you\u2019re going to go for it.\u201d<\/p>\n