The American Dream is no longer a reality for people in their 20s and 30s — but there’s still a way they can give themselves ‘an unfair advantage’ to beat the system. Here’s how

Young people are facing unprecedented struggles

Appearing on an episode of the YouTube show, The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett, Pal explained that when he was working as a young person, he was able to buy a house in a desirable area that cost around three times his yearly wages — but the chance to do that has disappeared thanks to property values growing so much faster than salaries.

“It’s tripled how expensive it is to buy your first house,” he said. Unfortunately, as he explained, this has far-reaching consequences beyond just having to pay rent for a while. Your house is an asset you can pass down, borrow against, or sell but you don’t get those opportunities if you’re priced out.

“The average millennial can’t afford to buy a house, so therefore their future self is poorer,” Pal said. He added that the slow growth in wages, combined with the fact people can’t buy properties, has led to many young people putting off marriage and having children. “Population growth is collapsing because people can’t afford it,” he said.

It’s not just the house, either. As Pal pointed out, with lower wages, young people can also buy less of the stock market when they invest, which affects wealth growth as well. The ultimate outcome, he says: This generation won't be as rich as their parents.

“And that’s a weird thing."

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Recapturing the American dream

While Pal wasn't too optimistic about current trends, he did have some advice for young people coping with these headwinds.

“The first part of the game is income,” he said. “Without income, you don’t have the cash to do the other things.”

Pal said often the best way to make money is to become an entrepreneur, although he acknowledged this isn’t always an easy solution for everyone. Regardless, he sees your 20s as the time to give up on a work-life balance, put your head down and hustle until you’re in your mid-30s.

He suggests you learn as much as you can in this time, becoming an expert in one thing and a generalist on as much as possible. “Compete with yourself day and night to be the best you can,” he said.

As you’re learning, you should think about where you want to be in five years. Based on that goal, he says you can reverse engineer a plan to get there.

Say you want to build a window-cleaning business, you have to figure out how to scale your business, how you employ and train people, accounting, management skills, marketing — even public speaking. You might even take a job in the industry you’re interested in to gain a better understanding of it from a business perspective of how to beat the competition.

“It could be anything where you can glean knowledge to give yourself an unfair advantage,” says Pal. The idea is to “stack the odds in your favor” to get closer to that image of your future self.

Once you’ve got good income coming in, then it’s time for the next step: Investing. He’s not a big fan of the strategy of saving for 30 or 45 years to get a lump sum in their 60s since people need money now.

And that’s where people in their 20s and 30s can take advantage of the one resource they have more of than their parents: time. Which means they can afford to take on higher risk and higher reward investments to try to earn the types of returns that’ll enable them to accomplish their financial dreams today.

“The world is changing in many ways,” he said. “It’s offered us opportunities, whether it’s investing in technology, investing in crypto, that gives us much higher returns. That’s magic. It may be too risky for the parents, but if you’re young, you can take some risks.”

Of course, you do want to make sure you understand the pros and cons of any investment and take calculated risks — but if you follow his advice to boost your income, invest some of it, and earn generous returns, you may be able to make that American dream a reality after all.