Nearly 4 in 5 Americans Don’t Feel Their Financial Future Is Secure. Owning a Home Could Be the Fix

Economic strains have many Americans concerned about their financial future. 

A new Intuit Credit Karma/Harris Poll study found that 78% of Americans don't feel financially secure, even if they’ve been saving and playing by the rules. 

Moreover, nearly 3 in 4 Americans (72%) shared that their current  financial standing makes them feel like they will never have enough money to achieve the American dream.

But experts agree that if more people could find a way to afford a home, their financial future could be assured. 

And yet—is that still a reality in 2026?

The current economic crisis

On April 22, The Associated Press-NORC Research Center released its latest survey, showing President Trump’s economic approval rating slumping to 30% this month. That’s an 8-point decrease from March and a 9-point fall from February, when the Iran war began.

The conflict has specifically affected the price of gas, which hit over $4 a gallon at the end of March. If fuel costs remain high, everything from landscaping to energy bills will continue to rise for homeowners, at a time when inflation is still hovering around 3%. 

With prices so high, fewer Americans have the ability to save for retirement, emergencies, or down payments. 

According to the Intuit Credit Karma/Harris Poll study, 37% of Americans have given up on long-term savings to prioritize spending on short-term purchases, with 21% saying they are struggling to afford necessities like their rent/mortgage, food, and utilities.

And even though 70% believe they’ve made smart financial decisions, 68% say that having a positive financial standing on paper today doesn’t mean the future is secure. 

Is homeownership the answer? 

As more of your paycheck continues to go toward essentials, the dream of homeownership can feel out of reach.

Couple that with the added expenses of owning a home—taxes, insurance, and maintenance—and sticking with renting may seem like the only course of action. 

But consider your core monthly housing expense. 

If you purchased a home at the current median price of $415,000 with 20% down and a 6.3% interest rate on a 30-year mortgage, your principal and interest payment would be approximately $2,055.

That payment is locked in for 30 years. As a renter, however, you are vulnerable to annual price hikes. Even a modest 5% annual increase could turn today’s $2,055 rent into nearly $2,623 by 2031.

The biggest difference? None of your rent comes back to you. With a mortgage, every payment builds your equity, turning a monthly expense into a long-term investment.

"A fixed-rate mortgage is essentially a hedge against inflation," explains Realtor.com senior economic research analyst Hannah Jones. "While renters face rising costs every lease renewal, homeowners lock in their primary housing payment and watch it become a smaller share of their income over time as wages and prices rise around it."

While that may be true, most people argue that mortgage rates and home prices are just too high right now to be affordable. But as Jones rightfully points out, house prices are always going to go up.

"Historically, home prices have risen in all but a handful of years over the past half-century, which means well-prepared buyers waiting for a better entry point in terms of price-level alone is a bet that has rarely paid off," she explains, while pointing out the "compounding cost" most buyers generally overlook.

"A home that costs $400,000 today and appreciates at even a modest 3% annually will cost roughly $45,000 more in just three years, meaning the down payment savings a buyer accumulates while waiting are often outpaced by the price growth they are trying to avoid. The exception is a genuine market correction, but even buyers who timed the 2008 downturn perfectly had to survive years of price declines before the recovery rewarded their patience, and most markets today have structural supply shortfalls that make a comparable correction unlikely."

But perhaps the strongest case for investing in a home to secure your financial future is home equity, a lifeline of funds far stronger than other forms of debt, like credit cards.

"Home equity is an emergency safety net that gets larger over time rather than more expensive to use," adds Jones. "As a homeowner pays down their mortgage and values appreciate, a HELOC or home equity loan becomes available at interest rates that are typically a fraction of what credit cards charge, currently in the 8% to 9% range versus 20-plus percent for the average credit card. A renter facing an unexpected $10,000 expense may feel high-interest debt is their only option, while a homeowner with equity has access to lower-cost borrowing secured by an asset they already own and are building wealth through regardless.

"Equity converts the home from shelter into a financial cushion that can absorb life's surprises without the debt spiral that credit cards can create," she says.