These aspirations push people, especially the middle class ... I finally felt like I had "made it" when I moved into a house and found I had a room I had no idea what to do with.

The trap is so common it has a name: house poor. The common definition of house poor is having a mortgage or rent payment that is too high relative to one’s income, cash flow or net worth.

Many of them are currently “house poor,” meaning they’ve bought a home that prohibits them from affording much outside of paying for said property. There’s a general rule that your housing ...