Gen Z forced to rewrite the American Dream in the ‘Great Postponement’: Fixer-uppers, side hustles and doing life out of order

The American Dream has typically looked something like this: A steady job, a shiny new set of keys to a first home, marriage, two kids (and maybe a dog), all while building wealth along the way.

For generations, that’s been the familiar “white-picket fence” picture of making it in America.

But that has run smack into “the great postponement,” an affordability crisis and economic stagnation that haven’t been seen in many years.

Some of the younger generation’s response to these factors has been caricatured as “ financial nihilism ,” but young adults are still by and large hitting the same milestones their parents did, just in a different sequence, in a different timeline and often with different tools.

It’s a more improvisational shot at the American Dream, because it has to be.

Young Americans have spent years watching home prices climb out of reach, while marriage and children are happening later and the traditional career ladder has become less predictable.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve given up on the milestones generations before them chased.

Instead, some are finding workarounds: buying homes that need work, renovating them piece by piece, earning money outside a traditional 9-to-5 and worrying less about doing any of it in the order they were supposed to.

And despite all the talk of Gen Z’s financial nihilism, many remain surprisingly optimistic.

Nearly two-thirds of Gen Z adults say their generation faces tougher economic circumstances than previous generations, according to a nationally representative Urban Institute survey published in July .

However, 56% still expect their personal financial situation to improve within the next year, and 42% think they’ll eventually be financially better off than their parents.

“They’re not just postponing life markers,” said Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, who has argued that this era amounts to a “great postponement” .

Of Gen Z, she told Fortune ,”They’re also taking a different path.” To Wachter, the changes showing up in where young adults live, how they work and when they start families aren’t isolated trends.

They’re different responses to the same economic constraints reshaping early adulthood.