Mrs. Dow Jones: Why Old Wealth Rules Fail Millennials When Cost of Living Is So High

Carl Sullivan

Mon, May 18, 2026 at 9:12 AM EDT 4 min read

Quick Read

• Between 2001 and 2024, the cost of maintaining a basic standard of living rose 106% while wages stagnated, forcing millennials to reconsider traditional wealth-building rules that no longer align with economic realities.

• Rather than aggressively paying down all debt, millennials should compare debt interest rates to expected investment returns (using 7% as the threshold), says Mrs. Dow Jones.

• They can prioritize capturing employer 401(k) matches and investing through low-cost index funds when debt rates fall below expected market returns.

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If millennials follow the rulebook their parents used, they may be in trouble, says financial influencer Haley Sacks, known as Mrs. Dow Jones. She's seeing younger generations struggle as wages don't keep pace with inflation. College education and housing are no longer affordable.

"I'm in my DMs and people are complaining because since 2000, the cost of living has gone up 67%, but wages have gone up 7%," Sacks said on a recent episode of the Bloomberg Talks podcast. "There need to be new rules that meet us where we are at now."

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If anything, her cost of living example number is an understatement. Between 2001 and 2024, the cost of maintaining a basic standard of living actually rose 106%, according to the LISEP’s True Living Cost (TLC) Index.

Sacks, who has spent nine years building her brand, recently published a book, "Future Rich Person: The New Rules of Building Wealth." In it, she pushes back on the finance industry's canonical "all debt is bad" line.

"One of the old rules of building wealth is that all debt is bad, that we need to all be out of debt," she said. "But, I mean, you guys talk to really rich people all day. You know, they love leverage ... If you have student debt and it's below 7%, which is sort of the threshold of low interest rate ... it's actually OK. Let's just pay the minimum on it and use whatever extra money that you have left over on these other financial goals."

Run the numbers on a hypothetical millennial balance sheet. Say you have $30,000 in federal student loans at 5%, and $500 a month in discretionary cash. Option A: throw all $500 at the loan each month. Option B: pay the minimum, route the $500 into a workplace 401(k) with a standard 50% employer match on the first 6% of salary. Invest the rest in a low-cost index fund.