McDonald’s is complimenting its popular $5 Meal Deal with an even better offer: 50 cent cheeseburgers.

For the second consecutive year, the fast food giant is discounting one of its most popular menu items on National Cheeseburger Day. On Sept. 18 only, customers will be able to buy the chain’s famous Double Cheeseburger for 50 cents.

The offer is available to customers who use the fast food chain’s smartphone app, and is limited to one burger per customer.

Users who open the app will be prompted to take advantage of the National Cheeseburger Day promotion, and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout.

McDonald’s announced the return of the deal at the same time that it revealed its $5 Meal Deal would be sticking around until December. The combo, which was released this summer amid slumping sales, features a choice of McDouble or McChicken sandwich, four-piece McNuggets, small fries and a soft drink.

The offering from the Golden Arches is competing with value combos from rival fast food chains like Taco Bell, Burger King, Wendy’s and Popeyes.

Diners looking to get the most value on National Cheeseburger Day will also be able to score a 1-cent Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger from Wendy’s with the purchase of another menu item if they buy it on the chain’s app or website.

Burger King, meanwhile, will give a free cheeseburger to any member of its Royal Perks rewards program who makes a purchase of $1 or more.

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I was raised by a single mom who was careful about money. She scrupulously saved, clipped coupons and held onto furniture and clothes that would not have looked out of place in an 80s movie.

After I got my first job, I earned a decent salary as a software engineer, but I realized that I had inherited my mom’s scarcity mindset. I always felt worried or guilty about money — and a lot of it was just going to our basic living expenses and paying off my wife’s student debt.

My approach to money changed in 2019, when my wife and I started talking seriously about what kind of future we wanted for our two young kids. We wanted to build wealth so that they could afford more opportunities in the future. 

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We educated ourselves and made a plan with help from a financial advisor. We started investing in real estate, acquiring three rental properties. And in 2020, we launched a personal finance website, Parent Portfolio, to help other families like ours. 

At 37, my net worth had reached a million dollars. Although I hit this financial milestone, there are some frugal habits that I will never give up: 

Our local library is a wonderful place to spend an afternoon. It offers so many fantastic free resources that many people may not be aware of. 

In addition to borrowing books, my family has used our Omaha library’s 3D printer and checked out board games as well as podcast equipment. 

We’ve taken advantage of some great community activities, like baking classes, art tutorials and basic self-defense training. 

No matter how much money I make, I will always make sure that I have a library card.

Like many people, I have a cup of coffee every morning. But buying it every day can quickly become an expensive habit, which is why I still like to make it at home. 

I will get a $16 bag of coffee grounds from the grocery store — which will last for at least two months — and set up my coffee machine the night before to brew coffee the following day. This routine saves me money and time getting ready in the morning.

For the record, I’m definitely not against buying coffee. My wife and I will budget for it every month if we want to randomly sit down at a coffee shop while we’re out.

But my home set up definitely isn’t going anywhere. 

If something breaks at home, I make an attempt to personally fix it first. To me, frugality isn’t just about saving money, but taking care of the belongings we already own. 

For example, when my wife and I got married 13 years ago, we bought a dresser for our bedroom. There have been a few times when the drawer guide rails detached from the plastic meant to hold the dresser together. 

Rather than replace it because of this quirk, there have been several times where I’ve just drilled in screws wherever the plastic stopped holding up. 

For under a few dollars, I’ve been able to add more years to the life of the dresser, and ultimately save more money overall. 

Even though I am less stressed now about being able to afford the things my family wants and needs, I still never want to depend on a future paycheck for a purchase I’m making in the present.

Thanks to that mindset, I’m still very cautious about my credit card usage.

I always pay off the credit card balance every month to avoid paying additional interest. I only borrow money from a credit card if I know that I have already budgeted for that expense and I’m certain I have the cash readily available in the bank.

I pay close attention to what credit card points we have available to us and how to best apply them, whether that is exchanging them for free flights and a rental car, or using them to get gift cards that allowed me to replace a decade old 20-inch TV with a brand new 4K model.

My wife and I have never been big car people, and we try to keep our cars as long as possible. We have a 2005 Saturn Vue and a 2013 SUV. Both have over 100,000 miles on them. 

We invest in regular car maintenance and do our due diligence when things start to show wear and tear. For example, when one of our cars needed a new transmission, it turned out that it was actually more cost-effective to replace the car entirely. 

So I researched online and weighed different factors like mileage, year, prior accidents, and overall customer ratings, and found that used SUV with 80,000 miles already on it. We still have that car three years later.

When I look back at my upbringing, I am reminded of a quote by the late computer science professor Dr. Randy Pausch: “Engineering isn’t about perfect solutions; it’s about doing the best you can with limited resources.” 

Growing up, I didn’t have a lot, and I learned how to be creative with what I did have at my disposal. I think that informs a lot of the decisions I make about money today. 

I’ve never been about keeping up with the latest fashions or owning the newest tech gadgets. What I want to do is be able to spend our money on valuable experiences, whether that is learning a new skill or flying to visit our extended family. 

Ultimately, these frugal habits help us put our resources towards the things that matter the most to us. 

Jonathan Sanchez is the co-founder of Parent Portfolio, where he helps readers take control of their financial future and build wealth for the next generation. He was raised with frugal habits and by practicing wise money decisions, became a millionaire in his 30s. Follow him on Instagram and join his newsletter at Parent Portfolio.

Want to master your money this fall? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course. We’ll teach you practical strategies to hack your budget, reduce your debt, and grow your wealth. Start today to feel more confident and successful. Use code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off, now extended through September 30, 2024, for the back-to-school season.

Kelcie Lesko and Tim Khalil remember the moment when they gave up on buying their first home.

It was June 2023, when U.S. homebuyers were scrambling to beat out rising mortgage rates and snatch up what they could from a limited number of units on the market. Amid soaring house prices, many buyers made all-cash offers. Lesko and Khalil, a New Jersey couple, had lost out on about 15 bids on properties in Monmouth County at that point.

“We were just getting blown out of the water,” says Lesko, 28, who works in marketing. They had stretched their original budget from $300,000 to $380,000, and had been offering tens of thousands over list price to keep up with other bids.

Their last offer was a “beautiful” two-bedroom house with lots of space and a backyard, which they sensed “was going to be the one,” says Khalil, 30, a police officer. They offered $380,000 on the $315,000 residence and shook the hand of the seller, who said it was between them and another offer.

When their offer was rejected, “it was like a slap in the face telling us, ‘Wake up, this is just not for you,’” says Lesko.

They decided to stop looking for a home. Instead, they continue to rent a two-bedroom apartment for just under $3,000 per month.

“We both make good money. We both have good jobs. We’ve both done the right things to prepare us to become homeowners,” says Lesko. “But the way things are with the real estate market right now, I don’t think it’s possible for us to own a home.”

Lesko and Khalil are emblematic of many frustrated would-be buyers in their late 20s to early 40s who, despite doing everything “right,” find themselves priced out of homeownership.

Most members of the millennial generation entered adulthood during the 2008 financial crisis and aftermath. They faced a bleak job market, stagnant wages and mounting student debt, which hindered their ability to save.

As they enter their peak homebuying years, they face a housing shortage that’s driven the median U.S. home price to $412,300. That’s 40% higher than their parents paid in 1990, even after adjusting for inflation.

If they manage to stay ahead of rising costs of living and save enough for a bigger down payment, they’re further squeezed by higher mortgage rates, which have more than doubled since 2022 and increased monthly payments.

And while buyers must spend more, they often have to lower expectations for what they’ll get: They’re finding that available homes are smaller, farther away or in need of costly repairs.

In conversations with CNBC Make It, millennial buyers describe the trade-offs they face and their feelings of devastation, disappointment and anger that the goalposts keep moving and they can’t seem to win.

Homes have always been a major expense for first-time buyers, including boomers and Gen Xers. What’s changed is that houses — along with college tuition, rent and health-care costs — have become significantly more expensive, even when adjusted for inflation.

Wages aren’t rising fast enough to keep up: Home prices have grown twice as much as incomes since 1985.

In recent years, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate more than doubled from historic lows of around 3% in 2020 to a high of 7.6% in October 2023. The average has since come down slightly to 6.2%.

“When you look at mortgage costs relative to how much a typical family earns, it’s untenable — there’s not really any way for a middle-class family to afford a home right now if they’re a first-time homebuyer,” says Daryl Fairweather, senior economist at Redfin.

The median house price in the U.S. is now 5.8 times more than the median annual income of $80,000. In 1990, homes cost just two times as much as the median income.

That means mortgage payments are generally bigger, and it takes much longer for millennials to save for a down payment. Depending on location, it now costs $74,000 to $140,000 to put down 20% on a typical U.S. house, not including closing and other costs.

When communications professional Kelly Diehr, 31, and her husband started looking for a Denver-area home in January 2024, they figured a budget of $600,000 would go a long way. That was, after all, the median price for a house in the area at the time.

But the upfront costs of owning are much higher compared with those faced by homebuyers her age in the late 1990s, like her parents’ generation, she says, and the money doesn’t go as far.

“You go into the market, and you realize you have to give up on the ideal home that you thought you were gonna get, because six figures nowadays is nothing to buy a home,” says Diehr.

For $600,000, many of the available homes were over 20 years old, located in less-desirable areas and in need of serious renovations, such as new flooring, kitchens and bathrooms.

When she was growing up, Diehr’s immigrant mother from Brazil “hammered” at the idea of the American Dream — a pillar of which is homeownership, long viewed as a source of stability and independence.

“We start looking and think, ‘OK, we’re making more than our parents, we should be able to get a better home than them right now,’” says Diehr. “For $600,000, you’d think we’d be getting a turn-key home: three bedrooms, all-wood floors, two bathrooms and a decent backyard. And that is absolutely not the case.”

To better compete with other bids, the couple upped their budget by dipping into stock investments. They ended up buying a newly constructed three-bedroom home for $789,000 in April 2024. They were able to negotiate $47,000 in seller credits, which they used to buy down their mortgage interest rate to a more manageable 4.25%.

Diehr feels grateful they were able to make it work, but the trade-off was withdrawing from their retirement savings and spending about $200,000 more than they had originally budgeted.

For many young Americans, big cities like Los Angeles and New York offer the appeal of more job options, better pay, and a chance to meet different people. The rub? Even entry-level homes there can seem reserved for the wealthy.

When Jonathan Ochart, 32, moved from San Antonio to LA in March 2023, he thought he might be able to buy a small condo for $450,000. “One bedroom, 600 to 700 square feet, nothing fancy,” he says. 

The founder and CEO of a marketing and public relations company, Ochart was already a homeowner, having purchased a detached, two-bedroom house in San Antonio for roughly $275,000 in 2021. At that time, he was able to secure a 30-year fixed mortgage rate of 2.86% — a far cry from the nearly 8% banks charged in 2023.

“The only reason I was able to accomplish that was the historically low mortgage rates,” says Ochart, who now earns a net profit of about $100 per month renting out the home.

In LA, the condo listings in Ochart’s price range were far from his preferred neighborhoods and usually needed renovations, or they came with high homeowners association fees as part of a special assessment for repairs. Newer places in his budget turned out to be studio apartments that were closer to 350 square feet, without much closet space.

Ochart could have sold his San Antonio property to increase his budget. But he preferred to keep the home as a fallback option in case he ever had to return to Texas, especially since it was “locked in at a monthly price” that he can afford.

In early 2024, Ochart gave up on buying a condo in LA, where monthly mortgage costs would have been around $3,500 to $4,000. Instead, he found a rental he likes for about $2,100 per month, roughly half of what he would have spent on a home.

It feels “like a Catch-22,” says Ochart: “You can afford places in [smaller] cities that might not have job opportunities, but when you move to a bigger city with job opportunities, you’re priced out.”

The median price of a home in Los Angeles county is just under $960,000, according to Zillow listings data. That’s 14 times the median annual household income of $82,455 in that county, according to the most recent U.S. Census data.

“Compared to the boomers or Gen X generation? It’s apples to oranges. It’s just not a level playing field,” says Ochart about the income now needed to afford a home.

The rise in metro-area home prices has had a spillover effect in many mid-sized cities, which saw an influx of buyers from larger metros seeking more space and affordability during the Covid lockdowns in 2020, leading to rapid home price growth during the same period.

These “pandemic darlings,” as they became known, include mid-sized cities like Boise, Idaho; Tacoma, Washington; and Grand Rapids, Michigan. In Grand Rapids, median home prices were on the rise before the pandemic and then soared 54% from 2020 to $285,000 in June 2024, according to Zillow sales data.

Grand Rapids’ swift home price growth has squeezed out local buyers like Timothy Ham, 40, a veteran and network security engineer who had to relocate to Kalamazoo, an hour’s drive away.

In 2022, Ham struggled to find a one-bedroom rental in Grand Rapids for about $700 a month. For that same amount, he realized he could buy a $100,000 home with a VA loan that didn’t require a down payment.

However, the only affordable places he could find in Grand Rapids were “uninhabitable,” Ham says. Instead, he had better luck in Kalamazoo, where he purchased a two-bedroom house for $79,000, with mortgage payments of $635 per month.

While Ham was able to secure monthly payments well below what most Americans pay, living in Kalamazoo came with trade-offs, like having to drive an hour each way to work. He also says he moved into a “rougher neighborhood” where he hears gunfire “on a regular basis.”

Although he loves Kalamazoo and is happy to be a homeowner, the experience left him frustrated.

“I’m kind of put off that I was born and raised in Grand Rapids, served in the military for 20 years, and it’s like, ‘Now we don’t have a home for you, go somewhere else,’” says Ham. “But at the end of the day, you’ve still got to figure out a solution.” 

Taken together, these factors have created an environment where only certain prospective homebuyers succeed.

Americans now need to earn around $111,000 to afford a median-priced home with a 20% down payment — a staggering 50% increase over the past four years, according to Bankrate. To keep up with those prices, 36% of millennial and younger homebuyers rely on family help to cover down payments, up from 18% in 2019, according to Redfin.

The financial support helps them enter the market sooner, secure better mortgage terms and compete more effectively for a limited number of homes — at the expense of lower-income buyers and people without family help.

First-time buyers are increasingly older, too. In the 1980s, Americans tended to buy in their late 20s, but these days the median age is closer to 35, according to the National Association of Realtors. The share of first-time homebuyers has also declined since the 1980s — from roughly half of all buyers down to just under a third in 2023.

That’s largely because millennials must compete with boomers for homes, and that isn’t a fair fight. The average millennial has 30% less wealth at 35 than the average baby boomer did at the same age. And they only have 9.4% of the total U.S. wealth, compared with 51.8% for boomers.

The coming years could be tough for younger buyers, since there aren’t nearly enough properties to meet demand. As it stands, there’s a housing shortage of 4 million homes, according to NAR’s most recent estimates. While construction has picked up in recent years, it’s remained below pre-2009 levels due to continued supply shortages, high mortgage rates and a severe deficit of construction workers.

“We will need 1.8 million new housing units for about five consecutive years to remove the housing shortage deficit,” says Lawrence Yun, chief economist at NAR. Until that gap is closed, experts expect prices to keep trending upwards.

Nearly 3 in 4 millennials say that owning a home is a key part of the American Dream, the belief that anyone can achieve “success” and upward mobility through hard work.

Millennials who are unable to buy can feel a hit to their sense of selves. Others may stretch their housing budgets to keep up with the Joneses, at the cost of other financial goals like saving for retirement.

“That idea of owning your own land is deeply embedded in the American psyche,” says Ramit Sethi, bestselling author and star of Netflix’s “How to Get Rich.” “It’s underappreciated when it comes to home-purchasing decisions.”

Falling short can feel like a personal failure, says Brad Klontz, a financial psychologist and certified financial planner. That’s because homebuying is often driven by emotions, like the fear of missing out: “Without a doubt, whether it’s the right decision or the wrong decision, you’re being influenced by a bunch of subconscious biases and beliefs.”

Emotional decisions can lead buyers to spend more on housing than they can afford, says Klontz. Indeed, nearly half of current U.S. homeowners have regrets about their purchase, citing unexpected expenses as the No. 1 regret, according to a recent Bankrate survey.

Given how unaffordable homes are, Klontz recommends taking a hard look at the numbers. You might be better off investing your money, rather than using it to try to buy a home, he says: “Where’s it written that in order to have really ‘made it’ you need to be a homeowner?”

“For me, real estate isn’t just financial, it’s also personal,” says Ochart. The home he secured in Texas with a low interest rate gives him a sense of “safety.”

At the same time, he says, “if you don’t love the space, and you don’t love the neighborhood, it just doesn’t make sense to spend all that money that you’ve worked so hard to save.”

While Kelcie Lesko and her husband believe they’re better off not buying a home for now, they remain “devastated” by the state of the real estate market.

Even if interest rates drop, it likely won’t affect housing costs right away. Home prices are expected to rise by 15% to 25% in the next five years, largely driven by the gap between supply and demand, according to Yun, NAR’s chief economist.

For now, Lesko has lost hope that she’ll be a homeowner anytime soon. Without a windfall or generational wealth, “it’s nearly impossible for people our age to buy a home,” she says.

Want to master your money this fall? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course. We’ll teach you practical strategies to hack your budget, reduce your debt, and grow your wealth. Start today to feel more confident and successful. Use code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off, now extended through September 30, 2024, for the back-to-school season.

Trader Joe’s viral mini tote bags will soon be back in stock.

A representative for the popular supermarket chain confirmed to CNBC Make It that the colorful canvas bags, which have been sold out since they first hit stores in March, will be back on September 18.

The totes became an instant sensation when they first came out, with shoppers quickly descending on the limited supply. Some Trader Joe’s locations even put limits on how many bags customers could purchase.

The $2.99 bags — which are just a slightly smaller version of Trader Joe’s classic canvas bag and come in green, red, yellow and blue — proved so popular that they were soon being listed on eBay for hundreds of dollars.

If you missed out on your chance to snag a mini tote back in March, be ready to act fast when they are back in stock. Trader Joe’s says they likely won’t be around for long.

“The totes are a limited product rather than an everyday product at this time,” a representative for the chain told CNBC Make It.

In an episode of the “Insider Trader Joe’s” podcast released shortly after the tote bag frenzy, host Matt Sloan said the chain was taken aback by the popularity of the bags. The supermarket, he said, originally anticipated having enough inventory to last “several weeks.”

“We had actually hundreds of thousands of bags come in and go out within a week,” he said. “We had no inkling that they would be this exciting, this quickly, for so many customers.”

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Jay Chaudhry has seen his share of success.

The 66-year-old co-founded his first company, SecureIT, with his wife in 1996. That sold for $70 million in an all-stock deal in 1998. He then founded three other companies, AirDefense, CipherTrust and CoreHarbor, all of which were ultimately acquired.

In 2008, he founded his current venture, cybersecurity company Zscaler, at which he now serves as the CEO. Zscaler has a current market cap of $25.31 billion as of Thursday. Chaudhry’s own wealth is estimated at $9.5 billion, according to Forbes.

When it comes to what traits it takes to succeed, Chaudhry cites one characteristic: passion. Specifically, a “passion to achieve something meaningful,” he says.

Here’s why he believes it’s critical.

To begin with, being passionate about what you’re doing makes it much easier to do the job.

When that’s your driving force, “then work becomes your hobby,” says Chaudhry, “because you’re enjoying it.” It motivates you to work harder and get results. And those results drive you even further. It’s a domino effect of success that starts from that deep desire to dive in.

For Chaudhry, that passion came from “building something,” he says, or founding these multiple companies. He loved laying the foundations for his startups and seeing them through.

Ultimately, you end up saying, “let’s do more,” he says.

The opposite is true for people who don’t feel that fire.

“If people don’t have passion,” he says, “it doesn’t matter how much experience they have. It just doesn’t matter for any job.” You won’t have that internal drive to keep working toward solving problems and moving ahead. You won’t be as excited to do the work, and when you do sit down to produce, working could end up being less pleasant.

When Chaudhry’s looking for employees, he pays attention to how much research his candidates have done and the kinds of questions they ask to gauge their passion. If it seems like they’re very enthused, there’s potential for that to drive achievements on the job.

After that, he says, “success drives success.”

Want to master your money this fall? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course. We’ll teach you practical strategies to hack your budget, reduce your debt, and grow your wealth. Start today to feel more confident and successful. Use code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off, now extended through September 30, 2024, for the back-to-school season.

Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.