The American dream is “very dead” for millennials and Gen Z, according to financial influencer Haley Sacks, better known as Mrs. Dow Jones. In an interview with Business Insider, Sacks argued that traditional markers of middle-class success, homeownership, stable careers, retirement savings, have become functionally inaccessible to younger Americans, pushing them toward gambling and side hustles as alternative paths to wealth.

The claim lands against a backdrop of record-breaking numbers in the US gambling industry. The American Gaming Association reported that US commercial gaming revenue hit nearly 79 billion dollars in 2025, an all-time high, with sports betting revenue reaching nearly 17 billion dollars, up roughly 23 percent year over year, and iGaming revenue exceeding ten billion dollars for the first time.

Young Americans are driving a significant share of that growth. A 2026 Northwestern Mutual survey found that 32 percent of Gen Z respondents and 24 percent of millennials either participate in or are considering sports betting, rates far above older age groups.

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Sacks, a Fortune 40 Under 40 honouree and founder of the financial education company Finance is Cool, frames the shift as rational rather than reckless. Her argument is that when a starter home costs multiples of a young worker’s annual salary and student debt averages roughly 33,000 dollars for millennials and 22,000 dollars for Gen Z, gambling starts to look like one of the few available shots at a life-changing sum of money.

The economic data offers some support for the underlying frustration. A Beyond Finance survey from March 2026 found that more than 70 percent of Gen Z and millennial respondents described their spending as “survival mode,” covering essentials with little left for saving or investing. The economic anxiety is showing up in other ways too, with university graduates booing commencement speakers who tell them AI will transform their careers while the entry-level job market contracts around them.

But the leap from economic frustration to gambling as a wealth strategy is where the argument runs into trouble. A joint study by researchers at UCLA, USC, and Harvard found that the introduction of online sports betting in a state was associated with a ten percent increase in the likelihood of bankruptcy among young adults. States that added mobile wagering saw a 25 percent increase.

The researchers found that the convenience of phone-based betting, available around the clock and requiring no trip to a casino, was a key driver of financial distress. The pattern is particularly concentrated among men under 35, the same demographic most aggressively targeted by sportsbook advertising.

Gambling addiction among young Americans is rising alongside the revenue. NPR has reported on a growing number of young adults presenting with gambling-related debt, with counsellors noting that many entered sports betting through free-bet promotions and social media advertising that framed wagering as a skill-based investment rather than a game of chance.

Sacks acknowledged in the Business Insider interview that gambling is not a financial plan, but argued the impulse behind it reveals something real about how disconnected traditional financial advice has become from the economic reality facing people under 40. She pointed to the gap between the advice young people receive, save consistently, invest in index funds, buy a home, and a housing market and labour environment that make following that advice feel impossible.

The tension between those two realities is not new, but its scale is. Tech layoffs framed as AI transformation have eliminated tens of thousands of entry-level and mid-career roles across the industry since 2024, compounding the sense among younger workers that the system is not built for them.

The financial services industry has noticed the shift. Betting platforms and fintech apps increasingly market themselves to younger users with language borrowed from investing, offering “portfolios” of bets and “research tools” that blur the line between trading and wagering. European regulators have started cracking down on prediction markets that straddle that same boundary, with Spain blocking Polymarket and Kalshi for operating without gambling licences.

In the US, the regulatory picture is more permissive. Thirty-eight states and Washington DC now allow some form of legal sports betting, up from just one state in 2018. The expansion has been driven by state governments attracted to tax revenue and by a Supreme Court ruling that struck down the federal ban on sports gambling.

It is worth noting some caveats about the framing. Sacks is a financial influencer and content creator, not an economist, and her conclusions are based on anecdotal observation and her audience’s experience rather than peer-reviewed research. The gambling industry’s record revenue does not by itself prove that young people are gambling instead of saving, it could reflect broader population growth in legal markets, more states coming online, or increased spending by existing bettors across all age groups.

The correlation between economic anxiety and gambling behaviour is well documented in academic literature, but correlation is not causation. Some young adults may gamble because they feel economically hopeless, others may gamble for entertainment, and the two groups likely overlap in ways the available data does not cleanly separate.

What the numbers do show clearly is that a generation facing record housing costs, significant student debt, and a contracting entry-level job market is also gambling at historically high rates, and that the financial consequences of that gambling are falling disproportionately on the youngest and most economically vulnerable bettors. Whether that represents a rational response to an irrational economy, as Sacks argues, or a dangerous coping mechanism being exploited by a rapidly expanding industry, depends on which side of the bankruptcy statistics you are standing on.