Benjamin Highley, MA, LPC

40-year-old first-time homebuyers: the real reasons

Published on: 21/11/2025

For decades, the American dream included owning a home by your late twenties. Parents who bought starter homes in the early 1990s remember signing the deed around age 28 and moving in with a young family. Fast-forward thirty years and those same parents are stunned: according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the median first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. A year earlier the median age was 38; five years ago it was 33; in 1991 it was 28. In other words, the “starter home” has shifted by over a decade within a single generation.

Insight

When Labor Ends: Why We’re More Afraid of Losing Meaning Than Losing Jobs

Benjamin Highley, MA, LPC

Published on: 19/11/2025

For centuries, “work” has been the scaffolding of modern identity. What we do has become shorthand for who we are. The automation of labor therefore threatens not only livelihoods but selves. Strip away the title, the routine, the productivity metrics—and what remains? We imagine a world where no one has to work, yet instead of paradise, we envision paralysis.

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Why Therapy Isn’t Always the Answer

Benjamin Highley, MA, LPC

Published on: 10/11/2025

It’s become common today to assume that if you feel anxious or depressed, the solution is therapy. Entire industries now stand ready to provide it—clinics, apps, counselors on demand. And let me be clear from the start: I’m not against therapy. I’m a licensed counselor myself. I’ve sat across from people in real pain, and I know that therapy can make the difference between despair and survival. I’m not here to dismiss that. But I am here to ask a harder question: what if the explosion of therapy culture points to something deeper than a shortage of coping skills? What if anxiety and depression, in many cases, arise not from chemical imbalances or trauma alone, but from the absence of a worldview that can make sense of evil, suffering, and death?

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