Haley Sacks has a seven-figure net worth and a rented apartment in New York City. She is not in a hurry to change either of those things.
Sacks, the personal-finance creator behind the Mrs. Dow Jones brand, is pushing back on one of the most persistent assumptions in American financial culture: that owning a home is what responsible adults do.
She argues that although the pressure to buy is real, the math often is not, and that renting can be the smarter move for people who are honest about their circumstances.
“We all still have this idea in our head that when we own a home, that’s when we’re going to be an adult,” Sacks told Fortune. “But we have to rethink that, because many of us are never going to own a home.”
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The case against treating homeownership as a milestone
Sacks’ position is not that homeownership is bad. It is that buying a home because you feel like you are supposed to is a financial mistake, she said, according to Fortune.
She is waiting to reach a specific investment benchmark before she considers buying. Until then, the money that would go toward a down payment is going into the market. She sees that as the better use of capital for her situation right now.
“I would only buy as a lifestyle choice, never as an investment choice,” she said.
Her concern with the investment framing is that homes carry costs most buyers underestimate. The mortgage is the beginning. Property taxes, insurance, repairs, maintenance and renovations layer on top.
Sacks said that if she ever does buy, she expects “it’s going to be a money trap.” She was not ruling out homeownership. She was acknowledging that the costs of ownership do not stop at the purchase price.
For buyers who are close to a decision, Sacks’ framework comes down to a few practical tests.littleny / Getty Images
How far home prices have outrun young buyers’ incomes
The numbers are not hard to find. Home values rose 30% in real terms between 2019 and 2024. Incomes for households under 40 went up 9% over the same period, according to Pew Research Center.
Zillow ran the numbers as of September 2026. Buying a typical home required household income of around $121,500, using a 10% down payment on a standard 30-year mortgage. To rent a comparable place, $77,300 was enough.
That gap does not close easily. It has been widening for years, and nothing on the horizon suggests a quick reversal.
That $44,000 spread is what is pushing buyers to wait, downsize, or give up on the idea altogether. For many people, the first home is no longer a question of when. It is a question of whether.
What renting actually buys you
The argument that rent is wasted money has been repeated so often it gets treated as a law. It is not.
A large down payment is capital that leaves the market. It cannot go into a retirement account, pay down higher-interest debt, or sit in an emergency fund.
For someone who lacks stable income, is planning to move within a few years, or lives in a market where prices are high relative to rents, keeping that capital liquid is not a consolation prize. It is a strategy.
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A home can build wealth. It usually does when the buyer has enough cash to cover the full cost of ownership and stays put long enough to make back the transaction fees.
Take either of those out of the equation, and the case for buying gets harder to make.
The risk of trying to close the affordability gap fast
Sacks had something to say about what happens when people feel priced out. Some start reaching for faster fixes. She named prediction markets as an example, arguing that platforms packaging speculative bets as financial strategy are selling something that sounds like investing but is not.
Fortune cited research from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago showing that when buying feels out of reach, some households start taking bigger swings elsewhere. They treat volatile assets as a backup plan for building the wealth a home was supposed to provide. Most of the time, that trade does not go well.
Steady saving and low-cost investing are not compelling content. They are, however, the approach that holds up when the shortcuts do not.
Questions to ask before you buy a home
For buyers who are close to a decision, Sacks’s framework comes down to a few practical tests.
Can you cover the full cost of ownership without gutting your savings?
Do you plan to stay long enough for buying to make financial sense?
Is your income stable enough to carry a 30-year commitment through a downturn?
And underneath all of it, the question she keeps coming back to: Are you buying because you want the home, or because you feel like you are running out of time to be the kind of person who owns one?
The answer to that last question, she argues, should drive the decision more than any of the others.
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