For a long time, financial progress was easy to measure. Your income went up, you bought a house, you paid down debt and your net worth grew until you retired. If those numbers were moving in the right direction, you were doing well.
A new survey suggests many Americans no longer keep score that way.
What People Now Count As Progress
SoFi and YouGov asked more than 4,000 U.S. adults what financial progress looks like. The most common answer, from 59% of respondents, was the ability to enjoy life. Owning a home, which sat near the top of the list for previous generations, was named by only 27%.
Nearly three in four people, 72%, said they would accept slower progress toward long-term goals if it meant they could spend money on travel, family activities and shared experiences now.
They haven’t given up on the future. In the same survey, 62% said a comfortable retirement is still a personal goal, but only 46% believe they will actually get there. When asked about their proudest financial achievements, younger respondents often pointed to things like ending the month with money left over or keeping an emergency fund stocked.
The numbers make more sense in context. Housing is expensive, interest rates have stayed high and the safety nets people expect to rely on feel less certain than they used to. Some people respond by focusing on what they can control and enjoy today. Others respond by saving harder, treating the same uncertainty as a reason to build their own cushion.
Money Has Two Jobs
There are two very different ways to think about money.
The first is to think of every dollar as a future dollar.
Money you invest in your 20s, 30s or 40s has years to compound. Spending that money today means giving up what it could become. Skip a $5,000 vacation at 35 and invest the money instead, and you’re giving that money decades to grow. Building savings, investments and home equity can also provide a financial cushion against job loss, medical bills and the possibility of a long retirement.
But money also has a time value that doesn’t show up on a spreadsheet. Some opportunities expire.
You can take another vacation 10 years from now, but you can’t take your 10-year-old to Disney when they’re 20 and recreate the same experience. Or, you might finally have enough money at 65 to take the hiking trip you’ve always dreamed about, but you may not have the health or energy you had at 55. Even something as simple as paying for a big family vacation can become harder to recreate once children move away, parents get older and everyone’s schedules change.
That doesn’t mean spending today is more important than saving for tomorrow. It means money has two jobs: helping you build financial security for the future and helping you make use of the life you have today.
Either philosophy can be taken too far.
“Enjoy life now” can gradually become an excuse for not saving enough. You don’t necessarily wake up one morning and decide to neglect retirement; it can happen $500 at a time as today’s wants continually take priority. The SoFi survey found that 27% of Americans have used Buy Now, Pay Later plans to cover expenses, an example of how spending for today can turn into borrowing from tomorrow.
But save-first thinking has its own risk. You can become so focused on maximizing your retirement account or net worth that you repeatedly postpone experiences you can afford, only to reach retirement with plenty of money and fewer opportunities to use it the way you once imagined.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other. It’s finding the point where you’re saving enough for your future without unnecessarily postponing the life that money is supposed to help you enjoy.
Final Thoughts
Money expert Clark Howard has long emphasized the value of spending money on experiences — especially time with family and travel — rather than automatically chasing a bigger house, newer car or higher net worth.
But there’s an important catch: Enjoying life today shouldn’t come at the expense of being able to afford your life tomorrow.
You don’t get those early saving years back. Money invested in your 30s can have decades to compound, while money you spend today is gone. At the same time, there are experiences you can’t simply reschedule for retirement. Your kids will grow up. Your parents will get older. Your health and priorities may change.
The goal, then, isn’t to choose between living for today and saving for tomorrow. It’s to make room for both.
Build an emergency fund, take advantage of your employer’s full retirement match and avoid financing your lifestyle with high-interest debt. Once those priorities are covered, give yourself permission to spend some of your money on the people, places and experiences that make your life richer now.
Because financial success isn’t just about how much you have when you retire. It’s also about what your money allows you to do along the way.
About the survey: The SoFi study was conducted online by YouGov from July 6 to 14, 2026, among 4,090 U.S. adults ages 18 to 65. The sample used nationally representative quotas for gender, age, education, race and region.
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