A new study in a land of grumps reveals that retirees with a guaranteed lifetime income stream can find true happiness.
American Dream
It’s Not Your Imagination: Rent Prices Really Have Been Rising
Thanks to cheap home prices and mortgage rates at historic lows, it’s easy to argue that now is the ideal time to buy a home. But many would-be buyers are worried the market hasn’t yet reached bottom, and years of plunging home …
The American Dream Gets Another Facelift
The American Dream of home ownership has taken some hits in the recession. But it remains alive and well, though with some twists that will help shape the nature of the budding housing recovery.
American Dream Deferred: We Now Embrace More Modest, Personal Goals
Why We Can’t Buy Happiness — But Try to Anyway
In 1972, the percentage of Americans who said they were “pretty happy” was about 50%. In the years since, the U.S.’s standard of living has risen dramatically, and our gross domestic product per capita has increased by 96%. That …
Downgrading the American Dream
The American Dream has been downgraded, too.
Homeownership: Still Popular But Not Seen as a Smart Investment
Americans have long overindexed on the value they place on owning a home when compared with people in other western countries. That white picket fence in the age-old imagery of the American Dream? That stands for real estate.
Economic Doom, By the Numbers
Unemployment, misery, workplace dissatisfaction, the disappearing American Dream, forecasts of another Great Depression … Yikes!
The bastardization of the American Dream
Today the Obama Administration will host a conference on the future of housing finance. It’s a great topic, considering that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are more than $150 billion in the hole. But this is about more than what to do with the GSEs.
There are bigger questions to ask about how we approach home ownership in the U.S. For …
In the Land of Opportunity, Not as Much Opportunity as You Might Think
Is a combination of hard work, intelligence, and talent a guarantee of success? Or has the American Dream become just a dream?
No One Said Homeownership Was Easy, or That It’d Make You Happy
A study conducted by a Wharton professor—whose research was all conducted well before the recession and the housing crash—shows that despite all the hoopla about the white-picket-fence American dream of owning a house, homeowners are no happier than renters. Whatever joy homeowners derive from their properties is offset by …
