When you close your eyes and envision the American Dream, there’s a pretty good chance you’re envisioning it as Norman Rockwell painted it. A house with a white picket fence, a few cars, 2.5 kids to send to college, and a growing retirement nest egg set aside for golf trips and cruises.
One look at the math reveals that many Americans are not in a position to make that dream a reality.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual income for U.S. workers earning a full-time wage or salary is approximately $63,000. According to the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the median home sale price nationwide is more than $400,000. According to the Education Data Initiative, the average cost of college is more than $38,000 per student per year.
Even many people who make six figures a year, the classic indicator of “success,” say they feel trapped. According to a quarterly financial survey released in June by CNBC and SurveyMonkey, 41% of Americans who earn between $100,000 and $250,000 a year say they live paycheck to paycheck.
The numbers are clear when it comes to achieving the quintessential American dream. You need to earn far more than the average person. Of course, there are no rules that say you have to own a house, a car, or have children. You don’t have to climb the career ladder or wait until age 65 to start doing the things that bring you joy and fulfillment.
CNBC’s Make It spoke to three Americans who say they’re living the dream right now, whether it’s by landing a low-paying, happy job or starting an empowering business. Their ages range from 26 to 52, but none of them earn a six-figure annual income.
“No matter how hard the days are, I still do what I love.”
When Kinley Cook graduated from high school in North Carolina in 2016, she didn’t know exactly what she wanted to do. She attended community college, worked as a nanny, helped out at an accounting firm, worked shifts at a bakery, and had “the best summer of my life” at a camp.
This camp inspired her to ask herself, “What do I love?” The answer, she says, has been the outdoors since she was 5 years old, inspired by local camping trips and her time working as a junior ranger for the National Park Service. In 2021, she took a job at Goose Creek State Park in North Carolina’s Beaufort Country and began a bachelor’s degree program in Parks and Recreation Management at Western Carolina University.
She currently works as a guide at Catoctin Mountain Park, a national park in Maryland’s Blue Ridge Mountains. The park includes hiking trails, mountain views, and the presidential retreat Camp David. “I get to be a part of someone’s first interaction with nature for a significant amount of time, and I love being that person for people,” she says.
Kinley Cook, 28, is a guide at Catoctin Mountain Park.
John Zook
Cook earns about $50,000 a year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Due to its proximity to Washington, D.C., it is higher than many park rangers on the same rung of the career ladder. The pay is “not very high” due to its proximity to the nation’s capital, she says, but it’s enough to pay the rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Hagerstown, Maryland. Plus, she says, her lifestyle is relatively inexpensive. She runs five to seven miles every day and spends extra time in nature in a way that benefits her mental health, she says.
Living in the great outdoors can also be stressful. When the White House ordered layoffs at the Park Service in early 2025, she said, “I went to work every day worried that I would put my card in my computer and it wouldn’t turn on.”
When the federal government shut down in October, Cook took a job as a bartender at a nearby brewery, which she continued to do after her 43-day furlough. She now bartends two nights a week and makes about $1,200 a month more.
“If you take all the government extras out of it…it’s a dream job,” Cook said. She added that she has no plans to change her career, although she could consider moving elsewhere. “Even on the most difficult days, I’m doing a job I love. What a gift that is.”
“It’s a full-time job, but I’m going to do it anyway.”
Some children daydreamed while flipping through Sports Illustrated or Vogue. Brendan Emmett Quigley says he grew up “devouring” every issue of Games, a monthly puzzle magazine run by New York Times crossword legend Will Shorts.
Quigley, now 52, is one of relatively few people in the United States who makes a full-time living creating puzzle content. He writes about five puzzles a week, including two crosswords that he posts for free on his long-running website, and the Boston Globe recently premiered a game he co-created called Align. He sells custom puzzles for birthdays, weddings, advertising, and more.
In 2024, Quigley earned about $78,000, according to the documents. Although his income fluctuates from year to year depending on the market for puzzles, he says neither Quigley nor his wife, an associate professor in the College of Liberal Arts, have ever earned six-figures a year.
But they live what some would describe as a fairly traditional version of the American dream. They own two houses. One is a condo I bought in 2009 and currently rent to a tenant, and the other is a condo I bought in 2013 and currently live in. They both have retirement savings accounts and save diligently for short-term goals, Quigley said. They want to send their 14-year-old daughter Tabitha to college.
“We’re very comfortable, but we’re not lighting cigars with $100 bills,” Quigley said.
Brendan Emmett Quigley, 52, is a full-time puzzle maker.
tabatha donovan quigley
Quigley had a “slow start” in building a financially secure life, he says. He spent most of his 20s in “post-college bohemia,” sharing group houses, playing in bands, and often living paycheck to paycheck in office jobs, earning about $75 for each puzzle he succeeded in publishing. He first really broke out in 2001, as a regular puzzle maker for Blender magazine, where he says his monthly income of $500 covered his $450 rent.
When he and his wife got together, he says, they got serious about money, and they put whatever money they had left toward the down payment on their first condo. They lived there for four years, during which time they actively saved to purchase a second property. To do so, Quigley put off saving for other goals, including retirement, he says.
It takes hard work to rebuild your savings while managing two mortgages and raising a child. So is his work. He built a fan base and customer base by publishing new creative puzzles almost every day for years. “Publish or perish, the dial-up is 11,” Quigley says.
Some days, he says, he feels like he’s run out of ideas for how to write themes and tips about the word “cat.” Other than that, I feel like I’m doing exactly what I’ve wanted to do since launching the first issue of Games.
“It’s a full-time job, but it’s something I want to do anyway,” Quigley says.
“I just want to make art and live my life.”
Kate Merryman said she suffered from “cabin fever” while living in a “hut”. The part-time job she found to get out of her small home changed her life.
In 2019, 19-year-old Merryman landed what she thought was her dream graphic design job at sports retailer Fanatics. But after three years, she says she’s tired of the grueling 9-to-5 job. She quit her job and became a freelancer, but the timing was unfortunate. Later that month, the rent on her Tampa apartment doubled to $3,200 a month, and she and her three roommates separated.
Merryman and her boyfriend moved into a cabin in her aunt’s garden in nearby Wesley Chapel, paying a total of $800 in rent and half of her aunt’s utilities. The cabin has a standing shower and kitchenette, and Merryman added a countertop stove and oven. “We lived there for three and a half years without air conditioning most of the time and the roof was leaking,” she says.
Merryman has built a freelance career using the shed’s WiFi that earns her $30,000 to $45,000 a year. Feeling stuck, she took a part-time job teaching at a children’s art school, where she says she discovered she loved working with children.
Kate Merryman, 26, is a freelance graphic designer and owner of art school The Artist’s Ream.
Courtesy of Kate Merryman.
After her cabin flooded, Merryman moved about 20 miles north to Brooksville, where she was impressed by her new town’s burgeoning arts community. She thought it would be the perfect place to start her own art school. And while living on her aunt’s property, she had saved up about $50,000 in cash and $20,000 in investment funds, enough to fund a major project.
She found a space to rent for $1,000 a month. Plus, she says, utilities and fees will cost an estimated $2,000. She signed a two-year lease in May, and her school, The Artist’s Realm, had a soft opening on July 1st. The school may not be profitable for a while, if ever, so Merryman plans to continue freelancing full-time while growing her business on the side, she said.
She’s not sure whether running an art school is her calling for the rest of her career — “I change my mind so often that I might hate it,” she jokes, but she says she’s committed to being her own boss and avoiding a 9-to-5 job.
“I’m not in it for the money. If you say anything about me, I was perfectly happy living in a cabin for three years,” says Merryman. “I just want to make art and live my life.”
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