For decades, the American dream seemed simple: Get a job, build a family, and work for a few decades before retiring at 65.<\/p>\n
Haley Sacks \u2014 also known as Mrs. Dow Jones<\/a> \u2014 says that sort of life path is now a bygone era. During an interview with Business Insider, Sacks said the biggest financial overlap between millennials and Gen Z is that they “inherited a system that is broken.”<\/p>\n “The rules for building wealth are made for an America that doesn’t exist anymore, because the American dream is very dead,” Sacks, a financial influencer and CEO of Finance is Cool, told Business Insider. “We aren’t going to stay at our jobs for 30 or 40 years. It’s not this easy path of maxing out your 401(k), buying a house, then you get to retire.”<\/p>\n Sacks said obstacles such as mounting student debt<\/a>, rising inflation<\/a>, AI’s impact on entry-level jobs<\/a>, and wages out of step with current living costs have handicapped younger generations.<\/p>\n “Also, what we want from our lives is different. We want time. We want freedom. We want ownership. It’s so different from being locked up in this corporate structure,” Sacks said.<\/p>\n The pressure is pushing people to find alternative sources of income through things like side hustles. Others, she said, have turned toward gambling in the hopes of hitting it big.<\/p>\n