HOUSEHOLD DEBT$18.77TNew York Fed · Q2 2026 snapshot
CREDIT CARD BALANCES$1.26TIncluded in household debt · Q2 2026
DEBT IN DELINQUENCY4.7%Share of household balances · Q2 2026
FED TARGET RATE—New York Fed data unavailable
30-YEAR MORTGAGE RATE—Freddie Mac data unavailable
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT / YOUR WALLET
Washington decisions. Household consequences.
About this coverage
Government decisions that may affect taxes, bills, benefits and public debt. Automatically matched news reports; topic labels reflect headline keywords, not a verified dollar impact or confirmation that a proposal became law. Check each report for who qualifies or pays, effective dates, and whether the action is proposed or enacted.
NATIONAL / BUSINESS & YOUR WALLET
Beyond the boardroom. Into your budget.
Jobs, wages, store openings and closures, grocery competition, healthcare, insurance and utility prices. Selected for household relevance—not whether the news is good or bad.
About this coverage
National stories come from NPR’s business and economy feeds; state and local stories come from each state’s nonprofit statehouse newsroom, covering the past year with a 15-minute cache. Local results keep only stories that name the place, so they can miss coverage. Keyword matches and topic tags are automated, not verified estimates of your financial impact. Read the source for affected locations, timing and whether a change is announced or completed. State stories may affect only part of the state; metro areas can cross state lines. Broader coverage is never silently substituted for local results.
01 / THE NEWS DESK
The national economic desk.
Economics for everyday households: competition, incentives, opportunity costs, trade-offs and fiscal discipline. News is selected for its effect on your wallet, not party affiliation. Economic analysis and opinion are labeled separately.
Checking publisher feeds… · broad-source news discovery and separately labeled free-market analysis; automated matches are not article-by-article fact checks
No headlines are available for this desk. Try refreshing or read the selected desk.
02 / THE COST OF LIVING
Your broader regional benchmark.
Broader Census-region context, not local estimates. Choosing a state above selects its region here. 2024 observed spending, per consumer unit. Monthly figures are annual amounts divided by 12; these are historical benchmarks, not today’s quotes or a minimum living budget.
SOUTH / SELECTED CATEGORIES
Shelter$1,154
Groceries$459
Healthcare$489
Utilities & services$387
Transportation$1,064
Compare all four regions in a table
Monthly spending
Northeast
Midwest
South
West
Shelter
$1,593
$1,138
$1,154
$1,753
Groceries
$597
$487
$459
$593
Healthcare
$524
$521
$489
$555
Utilities & services
$424
$365
$387
$415
Transportation
$1,028
$1,075
$1,064
$1,289
All expenditures*
$6,974
$6,226
$5,865
$7,719
*Includes additional categories beyond those shown. BLS Consumer Expenditure Surveys, 2024, via FRED. Values rounded to whole dollars.
03 / THE ACCOUNTABILITY FILES
Who pays. Who benefits.
EVIDENCE BEFORE ACCUSATIONS
HEALTHCARE / STAFF FINDING
The prescription middleman problem.
$7.3B+
FTC staff estimated that affiliated pharmacies of the three largest PBMs received this much revenue above estimated acquisition costs on studied specialty generics during 2017–2022.
Who bore the cost?
Health plan sponsors and patients sharing prescription costs.
Who received the revenue?
Affiliated pharmacies of CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx.
What does it establish?
A staff finding about revenue above a benchmark, not net profit or a court judgment of fraud.
RAND’s employer-led hospital price study compares private-plan payments with Medicare benchmarks. Differences identify questions to ask, not automatic evidence of wrongdoing.
Per-person division is an illustration, not a personal bill or legal liability. Federal debt is serviced through public finances; it is not added to your household debt.
AMERICA’S HOUSEHOLD LEDGER
Private borrowing
$18.77T
New York Fed · Q2 2026 snapshot
Mortgages$13.117T
Credit cards$1.263T
Auto loans$1.713T
Student loans$1.651T
HELOC + other$1.027T
Credit-bureau reported balances; not a complete measure of medical debt. Delinquency is a warning signal, not proof that every borrower is struggling.
Enter your household’s monthly net take-home pay to see suggested dollar ranges and a complete starting budget.
The starting allocation totals 100%. Ranges are alternatives—not amounts to add at their maximums. Increase one category by reducing another. Minimum debt payments belong in needs; extra repayment belongs with savings.
How these suggestions work
The broad 50% needs / 30% wants / 20% savings framework follows a common budgeting guideline described by the CFPB. The category splits and ranges are Maple Street’s illustrative starting points, not CFPB recommendations or measured costs for your ZIP.
Household size, childcare, disability, medical needs and local housing costs can change what is realistic. Add these obligations before discretionary spending. If essentials exceed 50%, reduce wants first and choose achievable savings goals. These percentages do not guarantee affordability.
Use pay after taxes and payroll deductions. Do not count health premiums or retirement contributions deducted before take-home a second time. Mortgage/rent here excludes utilities, which have their own row. Entries stay on this page and are not sent to a server.
Our economic lens is informed by Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell: incentives, competition, consumer choice, opportunity costs, unintended consequences and fiscal restraint. This is an economic framework, not a party endorsement. We examine business and government decisions by their evidence and household effects, including evidence that challenges our assumptions. No publisher is presumed free of bias. Headlines come from publishers’ own RSS feeds: NPR, Stateline, the Federal Reserve and the Congressional Budget Office nationally, and one nonprofit statehouse newsroom per state, refreshed on access with a 15-minute cache. These are discovery feeds, not comprehensive legislative tracking; topic tags do not establish financial impact or legal status. Local news keeps statehouse stories that name the place and match economic topics. The Economic analysis tab keeps Reason commentary visibly separate. Their free-market perspectives do not make every article neutral or correct; disagreement and contrary evidence remain relevant. Campaign tactics and culture-war coverage are not the editorial purpose.
Numbers with a date
Local housing and income use ACS 2020–2024 five-year estimates via Census Reporter, with 90% dollar margins of error. With browser permission, rounded device coordinates are sent to U.S. Census TIGERweb to identify an approximate ZIP area, then discarded by this app. Denial, timeout or lookup failure offers ZIP entry. ZIP news combines matched counties, towns and states without a drill-down; cost figures retain their named county or state benchmark. ZIP lookup uses Census ZCTA parent areas; ZCTAs approximate postal ZIPs. Regional figures are a separate fixed 2024 BLS snapshot via FRED. Household debt is a Q2 2026 snapshot. Treasury data and publisher RSS feeds are requested on access or refresh, with short caches. Interest rates come from the New York Fed and Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey®, cached up to six hours. Local Census data is cached for up to a day. A scheduled job refreshes saved copies of headlines every few minutes; they appear only when a live feed fails, labeled with their capture time. Visits are counted with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which sets no cookies and does not identify you.
Accountability with evidence
Allegations, staff findings, proposed settlements and judgments are different. A higher price or wider markup alone does not prove a rip-off. Comparisons must account for service, quality, geography, usage and household mix.