Is the American Dream still possible? As inflation continues to bloat prices, we hear this question bandied about with increasing frequency. The answer depends a lot on how we define the “American Dream.” Investopedia’s version of the dream costs some $4.4 million over a lifetime—a figure that may place it out of reach for many Americans.

The purpose of the report, published in September of this year, was to “quantify, in current dollars, the costs of eight aspects of life chosen because they are historically or commonly associated with an ideal yet attainable life in the United States.” The eight areas of life accounted for in the report were home ownership, new car ownership, a wedding, raising two children and giving them a college education, keeping pets, annual vacations, retirement, and end-of-life expenses.

The $4.4 million price tag for this seemingly average American life is over $1 million more than the average individual American makes in a lifetime, according to Investopedia, although dual-income households could achieve the necessary income. Still, it’s important to note that Investopedia’s figure does not include basic cost of living, such as things like–you know–food. And healthcare. And auto insurance.

Plus, the $4.4 million figure is $1 million more than Investopedia’s calculation in December of 2023, less than a year ago, which indicates the price of the American Dream is going up. It has been for some time: In 2016, Stanford researchers found that young people entering the workforce at that time were much less likely to earn more than their parents than the two prior generations. To put it in statistical terms, 90 percent of children born in the 1940s were destined to earn more than their parents did. But only 50 percent of children born in the 1980s had a similarly bright economic future.

All this data should stimulate a couple of sobering reflections with regard to the American Dream.

First, we’ve abandoned an economic model that promotes single-income households. The days when most families were supported by a single breadwinner (almost always the husband) have quietly slipped away. In 85 percent of marriages, the husband was the primary or sole breadwinner in 1972, while today the percentage is just over half, according to Pew Research. It’s common for both spouses to work a significant number of hours outside the home.

This tends to diminish family life since neither father nor mother can care for the children, and all the members of the family flee the home, scattering to jobs, daycares, and schools. American homes risk becoming little more than hotel rooms for nomadic parents and children. Homes are certainly not places of economic production in the way that they were in the days of cottage industry and family farming.

If the typical cost of the American Dream is now $1 million more than a single American worker can earn over his lifetime, then it’s clear that economic pressures are nudging both parents out of the home, and this has dramatic implications for family life, child-raising, and culture. As Michael Knowles points out, we need to grow the economy to bring the dream back within grasp.

That being said, the American Dream may not be quite as unattainable as Investopedia makes it seem. Again, it all depends on how you define that dream. For Investopedia, it means always owning new cars, spending a whopping $36,000 just on pets, shelling out over $40,000 on your wedding, and dropping almost $3,000 a year on trips. If that’s really what the American Dream has come to mean to us, then maybe we think we need more than we actually do.

Consider that you can buy a perfectly serviceable used car for less than $20,000, and it will easily last you a decade if you care for it properly and choose a good make and model. Using Investopedia’s range of actively driving for about 45 years of your life, that comes to a cost of $90,000 per driver over a lifetime, or $180,000 for a couple—far short of the $832,172 that Investopedia suggests you have to spend for transportation.

Or again, just because many people today drop $40,000 or more on a wedding doesn’t mean that figure is required in order to have a respectable marriage celebration. I’m pretty sure my wedding, which was beautiful and tasteful with a sizeable guest list, cost less than $10,000. (Then again, I never asked my in-laws exactly how much they spent … I haven’t been that desperate for a subject of conversation yet.)

Investopedia confidently states that it will cost you almost $1 million to raise two children (and send them to college), but the exact bill for brining up babies has been much disputed, and so much depends on your lifestyle and how well you budget. Even the USDA’s estimate—which seems to me hopelessly exaggerated itself—falls far short of Investopedia’s. Plus, the cost per child goes down the more you have, and the allure of attending an expensive college has been disappearing over the last few years.

I could go on, explaining why I question the projected costs in all of Investopedia’s categories, but I think I’ve made my point. By historical standards–looking at the vast swaths of human history from prehistoric times to the present–even the poorest Americans live like kings. Is it possible that our inflated expectations are a bigger problem even than inflated prices?

But lastly—and perhaps most importantly—maybe our understanding of the American Dream requires a more radical redefinition than just quibbling about numbers. Maybe we’ve missed the boat entirely.

The prevailing conception of the American Dream is shallow materialism, pure and simple. We think of the highest expression of what it means to succeed, to live the American way, to be an American in economic terms. This indicates that our highest ideals as a society are monetary.

Contrast this with the monuments of other civilizations, their guiding lights and ultimate contributions to the human story: the pietas of the Romans, the sophia of the Greeks, the religio of medieval Europe, the dàtóng of the Chinese. All these had to do not with mere bodily comfort but with nobility, sacrifice, community, learning, and love. What if the American Dream were more about civic responsibility, subsidiarity, family life, and the development of virtue than it was about the size of your retirement account?

One contributing factor to our current political divide is that we’ve lost our common values, lost sight of what it means to be American. Holding up an empty cushy lifestyle as our ultimate ideal inspires no one. It is not something to rally around. It is not something men are prepared to die for. Especially when it costs so darn much.

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