The American dream now costs $5 million. Here's a breakdown.

 Inflation has dimmed the American dream. 

It now costs $5 million over a lifetime to fund eight key components of the American dream, including homeownership and raising children, according to a new analysis from Investopedia. 

Everyone’s dream is different. But some human wants are universal, as Investopedia found in compiling its September report. 

In an accompanying survey, the financial journalism site asked 1,263 adults to identify goals they associate with the American dream. Most said they shared these eight aspirations: 

Retiring in comfort (86%) 

Affording quality health care (86%) 

Owning a home (85%) 

Raising a family (78%) 

Owning a new car (72%) 

Going on vacation every year (71%) 

Caring for pets (66%) 

Having a wedding (55%) 

The report tabulates the lifetime costs of each goal, tapping data from federal agencies, think tanks and industry groups. 

Here are the costs of achieving the American dream

Here are the lifetime costs of each goal, from largest to smallest: 

Retirement: $1.6 million 

Owning a home: $957,594 

Owning a new car: $900,346 

Raising two children and paying for college: $876,092 

Health care: $414,208 

Annual vacations: $180,621 

Pets: $39,381 

Wedding: $38,200 

Add them up, and you have a lifetime cost of $5,043,323 for achieving the American dream. 

That’s a daunting sum, considering the average American with a bachelor’s degree earns about $2.8 million over a career.  

The American dream is getting more expensive

Last summer on the campaign trail, presidential candidate Donald Trump pledged to "bring back the American dream."  

The numbers suggest, however, that the dream is getting more expensive. Investopedia found that most components of the American dream cost more in 2025 than in 2024, when the site last tallied costs.

“You’re definitely seeing a rise in prices pretty much across the board, especially for things like homeownership and raising kids and sending them to college,” said Caleb Silver, chief business editor of People Inc. and editor-in-chief of Investopedia.  

A lifetime supply of new cars cost $900,346 in 2025, versus $811,440 a year ago, Investopedia found. A lifetime of homeownership costs $957,594, up from $929,955. 

Not everyone, however, defines the American dream the same way.  

Michael Strain, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of a 2020 book about the American dream, suggests Investopedia might have set too high a bar.  

“I’m not sure we should equate the American dream with the lifestyle enjoyed by the top 10% of income earners,” he said.  

To Strain, the American dream is more about a sense of upward trajectory: “Are you getting ahead?” he said. “Are you doing better year after year? Are your kids going to do better than you’ve done?”  

The point of the Investopedia report, Silver said, is to get people thinking about how to finance their own American dream. 

“We hope that people will read this and think about what their dream actually is, so they can put a price tag on it and then come up with real strategies to be able to earn enough money to achieve it.” 

Here is a detailed cost breakdown of the American dream: 

Retirement: $1.6 million  

According to Investopedia, $1.64 million represents the average cost for 20 years of retirement. The tab is based on average annual expenditures in retirement. 

A year ago, Investopedia estimated the cost of retirement at just under $1.6 million.  

If those numbers seem high, consider that financial advisers often instruct retirees to plan on spending only 4% of their savings on annual living expenses. And 4% of $1.6 million is only $64,000.