This is the United States of America. Public Transportation costs more money than a car does once you do a proper TCO, and similarly most urban apartments cost way more than a modest house does on that same metric. Obviously there's always an exception to every rule, but the honest-to-goodness most-fiscally-responsible thing you can do here for 80%+ of regular folks, is to own an efficient vehicle (one per adult) and to own a house (one per household).

And that's before even getting into Student Loans + Medical Debt, the two actual real-world largest causes of American financial instability.