Skip NavigationKait Merryman, Brendan Emmett Quigley and Kinley Cook are all living a version of the American Dream while making under $100,000 per year.Alisa Stern | CNBC Make It | Courtesy Kait Merryman, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Kinley Cook
When you close your eyes and picture the American Dream, there’s a decent chance you’re envisioning it the way that Norman Rockwell drew it: a house with a white picket fence, a couple of cars, 2.5 children you plan to send to college and a growing retirement nest egg earmarked for golf trips and cruises.
You need only glance at the math to know that many Americans are not in a position to make that dream a reality.
Median annual earnings for U.S. workers earning a full-time wage or salary is about $63,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The national median home price sale is more than $400,000, per the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The average cost of college tops $38,000 per student per year, according to the Education Data Initiative.
Even many of those making six figures per year — a classic marker of having “made it” — say they feel strapped. Among Americans earning between $100,000 and $250,000 a year, 41% say they’re living paycheck-to-paycheck, according to CNBC and SurveyMonkey’s quarterly money survey published in June.
To achieve the classic version of the American Dream, the numbers are clear: You’ll have to earn a lot more than the typical person. Of course, there’s no rule that you must own a home or a car, or have kids. You don’t necessarily have to climb a corporate ladder, or wait until age 65 to start doing whatever brings you joy and fulfillment.
CNBC Make It spoke with three Americans who say they’re living some version of their dream now, whether working low-salary jobs that make them happy or starting businesses that energize them. They range from age 26 to 52, and none of them earn six figures a year.
‘Even on the hardest days, I’m doing a job that I love’
- Kinley Cook
- Age: 28
- Location: Hagerstown, Maryland
- Job: U.S. national park ranger
In 2016, when Kinley Cook graduated from high school in North Carolina, she wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted to do. She attended community college, worked as a nanny, assisted at an accounting firm, picked up shifts at a bakery and spent “the best summer of [her] life” working at a camp.
The camp inspired her to ask herself, “What do I love?” The answer since age 5, inspired by local camping trips and her time as a National Parks Service junior ranger, she says: the outdoors. In 2021, she landed a job at Goose Creek State Park in Beaufort Country, North Carolina, and began a bachelor’s program in parks and recreation management at Western Carolina University.
She now works as a guide at Catoctin Mountain Park, a national park in Maryland’s Blue Ridge Mountains that includes hiking trails, mountain vistas and presidential retreat Camp David. “I get to be someone’s first interaction with nature a pretty decent amount of time, and I love being that person for people,” she says.
Kinley Cook, 28, is a guide at Catoctin Mountain Park.John Zuke
Cook earns a salary of about $50,000 per year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It — higher than many park rangers on the same rung of the career ladder, due to her proximity to Washington, D.C. As salaries go near the nation’s capital, it’s “not great,” she says, but it’s enough to make rent on a one-bedroom apartment in Hagerstown, Maryland. Plus, her lifestyle is relatively cheap, she says. She runs five to seven miles a day, spending extra time in nature in a way that’s beneficial for her mental health, she says.
A life spent in the Great Outdoors can still be stressful. When the White House ordered job cuts to the Parks Service in early 2025, she says, “I would go to work anxious every day that if I stuck my card in my computer, it wasn’t going to turn on.”
When the federal government shut down in October, Cook picked up a bartending gig at a nearby brewery, and kept it after her 43 days on furlough ended. She now bartends two nights a week, making about $1,200 additionally a month.
“If you take all of the superfluous government stuff out of it … it’s a dream job,” Cook says. She could see herself moving to a different locale, but has no plans to change careers, she adds. “Even on the hardest days, I’m doing a job that I love. What a gift that is.”
‘It’s a full-time job, but it’s something I’d be doing anyway’
- Brendan Emmett Quigley
- Age: 52
- Location: Brookline, Massachusetts
- Occupation: Puzzle maker
Other kids daydreamed while flipping through copies of Sports Illustrated or Vogue. Brendan Emmett Quigley says he grew up “devouring” each issue of Games, a monthly puzzle magazine helmed by The New York Times crossword legend Will Shortz.
Today, at age 52, Quigley is one of the relatively few people in the U.S. making a full-time living from creating puzzle content. He writes about five puzzles a week, including two crosswords he posts for free on his long-running website, and The Boston Globe recently debuted a game he co-created called Align. He sells custom puzzles for the likes of birthdays, weddings and advertisements.
In 2024, Quigley made about $78,000, documents show. His income fluctuates annually depending on the market for puzzles, but neither Quigley nor his wife, an associate professor at a liberal arts college, have ever made six figures a year, he says.
Yet they’re living what some would describe as a pretty traditional version of the American Dream. They own two homes: a condo they purchased in 2009, which they now lease to tenants, and another where they currently live, purchased in 2013. They both have retirement savings accounts and diligently save for nearer-term goals, says Quigley. They hope to send their 14-year-old daughter, Tabitha, to college.
“We’re quite comfortable, but it’s not like we’re lighting cigars with $100 bills,” Quigley says.
Brendan Emmett Quigley, 52, is a full-time puzzle constructor.Tabitha Donovan-Quigley
Quigley got a “late start” building a financially stable life, he says: He spent much of his 20s living in a “post-college Bohemia” sharing group houses, playing in bands and often living paycheck-to-paycheck at office jobs, all while earning roughly $75 for each puzzle he managed to get published. He got his first real break in 2001 as Blender magazine’s regular puzzle maker, where his $500 in monthly earnings covered his $450 in rent, he says.
When he and his wife got together, the two got serious about their finances, he says, and put all their extra money toward the down payment on their first condo. They lived there for four years, during which they aggressively saved toward buying a second property. To do so, Quigley postponed saving for other goals, including retirement, he says.
Catching up on his savings while managing two mortgages and raising a child takes diligence. His job does, too. He built his fanbase and client base by publishing new and creative puzzles on a near-daily basis for years. “It’s publish or perish, dialed up to 11,” says Quigley.
Some days, he feels like he’s out of ideas for themes or ways to write a clue for the word “cat,” he says. Others, he feels like he’s doing exactly what he’s wanted to do since opening those first issues of Games.
“It’s a full-time job, but it’s something I’d be doing anyway,” says Quigley.
‘I just want to make art and live my life’
- Kait Merryman
- Age: 26
- Location: Brooksville, Florida
- Occupation: Freelance designer and owner of art school The Artist’s Realm
Kait Merryman says she had “cabin fever” while living in “a shed.” The part-time job she landed to get out of her tiny home changed her life.
In 2019, at age 19, Merryman landed what she thought was a dream graphic design job at sports retailer Fanatics. Three years in, though, she felt worn down by the 9-to-5 grind, she says. She quit and began freelancing, with unfortunate timing: Later the same month, the cost of her apartment’s lease in Tampa doubled to $3,200 per month, and she and her three roommates parted ways.
Merryman and her boyfriend moved into a shed in her aunt’s yard in nearby Wesley Chapel, paying $800 a month in total rent, plus half of the aunt’s utilities, she says. The shed had a standing shower and a kitchenette, and Merryman added a table-top stove and oven. “It didn’t have air conditioning most of the time, the roof was leaking and I lived there for three-and-a-half years,” she says.
Using the shed’s WiFi, Merryman built a freelance career that earns between $30,000 and $45,000 a year, she says. Feeling cooped up, she says, she also took a part-time job teaching at a children’s art school, where she discovered that she loved working with kids.
Kait Merryman, 26, is a freelance graphic designer and owner of art school The Artist’s Ream.Courtesy of Kait Merryman.
Merryman moved to Brooksville, roughly 20 miles north, after a flood in the shed, and was impressed with her new town’s burgeoning arts community. It would be the perfect place, she thought, for an art school of her own — and she’d saved about $50,000 in cash and $20,000 in investments while living on her aunt’s property, enough to fund a big project.
She found a rental space for $1,000 a month, plus an estimated $2,000 in utilities and overhead, she says. She signed a two-year lease in May, and her school, The Artist’s Realm, soft opened on July 1. The school might not turn a profit for a while, if ever, so Merryman plans to keep freelancing full-time while growing her business on the side, she says.
She’s unsure if running an art school is her rest-of-career calling — “I change my mind a lot, maybe I’ll hate it,” she jokes — but she’s committed to being her own boss and avoiding 9-to-5s, she says.
“I’m not really in it for the money. I was perfectly happy living in a shed for three years, if that tells you anything about me,” says Merryman. “I just want to make art and live my life.”
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