Homeownership, children, brand-new cars, weddings and retirement have long been considered the milestones of the so-called “American dream.” A Maryland finance professor breaks down the nuance behind what it costs to live the the dream.

Financial media website Investopedia calculated what it would cost to achieve the “eight pillars of classic American middle class aspiration” and came up with $5 million over a lifetime.

But University of Maryland finance professor David Kass said the actual numbers are much more subtle, but he said that it is obtainable.

Kass said there are many variables to reaching the American dream, which Investopedia defines from James Truslow Adam’s “Epic of America” — “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with

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