By the autumn of 2025, Ross had given up on buying a house. The 29-year-old St. Louisan was no longer saving, as he’d done while living with his parents during the pandemic. Nor was he thumbing through photos on Zillow in his spare moments. The last time he’d glanced online, the only houses within reach seemed like major fixer-uppers. So he resigned himself to renting an apartment.
“I think we just kind of live at a time in this country—the time during which we’ve grown up—where you don’t believe that any systems or institutions are going to act in a way that benefits you,” he says. “You don’t expect good things to happen, basically, especially from an economic perspective.”
Instead of squirreling away funds, Ross spent his income from managing a shoe store on “experiential stuff.” For him, that mainly meant eating out every day. His go-to move: scarfing down the moussaka and fried mushrooms at Michael’s Bar & Grill in Maplewood. Why live in austerity, he wondered, in service to an asset I may or may not obtain one day?…