Pod Insights The Personal Finance Podcast How Much More Expensive Has Life ACTUALLY Become Since 2020? About this episode That $100 you had in 2020 only buys $77 worth of goods today. Here is exactly how much more expensive every single category of your life has become since then.
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What You'll Learn in This Episode
Why the 29% inflation number feels like a lie and why it actually is for most households
How home prices rose 53% and why today's buyer finances $100,000 more than six years ago
The grocery items that got hit hardest and why your personal food inflation is higher than the average
Why the average new car payment is now $750 to $940 per month and how to win with cars instead
How childcare now costs more than in-state college tuition in 38 states
The insurance categories quietly draining your budget without you even noticing
What actually got cheaper since 2020 and how to use it to your advantage right now
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Tool/s Mentioned
Total Cost of Ownership Calculator https://mastermoney.co/total-cost-of-ownership-calculator/
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Episode/s Mentioned
Is the American Dream Dead? (With Freddie Smith) https://youtu.be/3Ivz8Ts9J2o
The Insurance Crisis Nobody Is Talking About (With Bob Litterman) https://youtu.be/gBuIOQKQgFM
Watch Next
Chasing a Higher Savings Rate, Semi-Retiring in Our 40s & Rebuilding After Bankruptcy (Money Q&A) https://youtu.be/OobdeA8qYbA
The Best and Worst Frugal Habits (Ranked!) https://youtu.be/_FKJfAjTi-I
She Hit Rock Bottom and Still Built a Six-Figure Life. Here's How. (With Rebecca Whitman) https://youtu.be/wBACCFI2w5s
How do Your Finances Compare by Age?! (Salary, Debt, Net Worth, Credit, Home) https://youtu.be/Z10g-yd76nk
How to Retire in 10 Years or Less! https://youtu.be/nStwD03vJ64
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Question for you:
What is the one expense in your life right now that feels completely out of control compared to just a few years ago? Drop it in the comments and tell us what you are doing about it.
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Transcript 11,382 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Andrew Giancola? When I started the Personal Finance Podcast, I had no idea how big it could become. I just knew I had something I wanted to share, so I started putting it online. And looking back, I definitely wish I would have started a decade earlier. One of the horror parts about building something online, though, is making it look professional. A website used to mean hiring a developer, figuring out design, and potentially spending thousands of dollars. In fact, on my website, I spent tens of thousands of dollars. That's what impressed me when playing around with Hostinger's AI Website Builder. I told it what kind of website I wanted, and I built the first version in minutes. No coding, no designer, or developer needed. And Hostinger doesn't stop at launch.
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1:29 Andrew Giancola? or piece of content that we record. And that's one of the things that I love about Wayfair. You can shop thousands of products across different styles and budgets, use customer photos and reviews to see how things actually look in real homes, and find something that fits your space. They also have Wayfair Verified Products that are hand-vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection. And with more than 20 million verified 5-star reviews, you can feel a lot more confident about what you're ordering. I've used Wayfair for this studio and our home, and I absolutely recommend them for your space. So transform your space with pieces that hold up to real life. Join Wayfair Rewards today and get 5% back on every single purchase.
2:14 Andrew Giancola? Head to wayfair.com or shop the Wayfair app for all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfair: Every Style, Every Home.
2:28 Andrew Giancola? On this episode of the personal finance podcast, we're going to get into how much more expensive life has actually become since 2020.
2:45 Andrew Giancola? What's up everybody and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host Andrew, founder of mastermoney.co. And today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to be talking through how much more expensive life has become since 2020. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the master money newsletter by going to mastermoney.co/newsletter. And don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever your favorite podcast player is. And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Cannot thank you guys enough for leaving those five star ratings and reviews.
3:29 Andrew Giancola? Now today, I'm excited for this episode because I wanted to dive into how much more expensive has life actually become since 2020, where we had Freddie Smith on a couple of episodes ago, where we were talking about how difficult it has been over the course of the last couple of years. And I wanted to dive into the numbers. I wanted to look deeper into exactly how much the price of everything has increased. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about the big reality. So I'm going to go through some of the overall expenses, how much that has increased, basically the CPI of this country. But then we're going to dive into different categories from housing to insurances, to transportation, to food. And we're going to look at how much this has changed over time. One thing I
4:11 Andrew Giancola? want most of you to note as well is your local inflation rate is also going to impact the amount of buying power that you have. So many of you may live in a high cost of living state. And if that is the case, then your buying power may have been diminished even more than what we are talking about here. Or maybe you live in a low cost of living state and you don't feel the pressure as much as folks who are in a higher cost of living area. So your location, even down to the city That you live in is going to matter a lot when it comes to some of these things. But I think you're going to be very surprised at some of these numbers and where they are landing and the difference between each of these. Also, one thing to note is it is very normal for inflation to happen. Inflation is a healthy thing over time for to have a very small amount of inflation,
4:56 Andrew Giancola? but to have a really rapid rate of inflation is not a healthy thing for most people, as you will see, because it really starts to stretch budgets and it really starts to put a lot of pressure on households. And if you feel as though everything is just so much more expensive and you feel as though everything is getting harder and harder, well, let me give you some numbers to help you through this process. So first, let's look at the big number, the headline stat here. And I'm going to dive into a lot of numbers here. So we're going to be talking through this and we'll put them on the screen as well as we have this conversation. So let's talk about CPI because overall CPI is roughly 29 to 30% from early 2020 to mid 2026. Now, the CPI index sat right around 258 in early 2020
5:41 Andrew Giancola? and it has hit 335.1 in May of 2026. Now, what does this mean for you and what does this mean for your wallet? Well, $100 in 2020 buys about $77 worth of goods today. Now, that is a big difference over the course of just six years. You made $100 in 2020 and you'd be able to spend that $100. But the same $100 made in 2026 only buys $77 worth of goods today. So I want you to think about something for a second. Let's say, for example, over the course of the last couple of years, you have not gotten a raise yet, or maybe you have just gotten very small raises over that timeframe. Then you might as well have just taken a pay cut if that is the case, which is why we want you to negotiate your salary so much because of this, okay?
6:24 Andrew Giancola? Secondly, though, is inflation re-accelerated in 2026? So the annual rate has hit 4.2% in May 2026, which is the highest since April 2023, driven largely after the war in Iran spiked oil. So Specific political events can cause this to rise. And so we know that over the course of 2020 to 2021, we saw some really rapid inflation rates over that timeframe. And the way that the Fed adjusts rates is going to impact some of this. There's a lot of things that can happen, but things that happen politically can impact your wallet. And this is where it's going to impact your wallet most is areas just like this. Now, you may be saying to yourself, yeah, that's completely fine, but this number still feels low.
7:07 Andrew Giancola? I feel as though in 2020, I could have bought something and actually had even more buying power than this. You feel even more pressure than you feel as though these numbers are showing. And the reason for that is this is not something you're just feeling. This is reality because that 29% somewhat feels like a lie to most of us. We feel as though, well, the price of cars have risen really rapidly. Groceries have risen really quickly. There's been a rising cost in insurances and our budgets are getting stretched left and right. So I'm going to give you a couple of reasons why this does feel like a lie. And it should feel like a lie for most of you because it's averaged. And so here's, let's talk through this for a second. Okay. There are three ways that we need to look at the CPI. First is weighting. Weighting means that the CPI is an averaged basket. This is not just something where it's the median, it is averaged.
7:51 Andrew Giancola? And so if you only buy electronics every couple of years and electronic prices don't rise too much. For example, like the cost of TVs, for example, those have gone down over the last couple of years. In fact, it feels as though TVs are the only good deal left when you want to go out and buy something. And so these types of products are going to skew the averages a little bit. Quality adjustments is number two. So let's say, for example, when your phone gets better, but the price stays exactly the same. The BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, actually records that price as a price cut when they do these numbers. So it is great for the statistic, but it does nothing for your wallet whatsoever. It doesn't help you out whatsoever. It really just helps out folks in Washington DC, to be honest, because overall this is more so something
8:35 Andrew Giancola? that you want to understand how this impacts your wallet. So you can focus on the things that you can control. Now, number three is your personal basket is not the national basket. Again, if you have young kids, if you have a mortgage with two cars, if you eat out, if you have a- Your personal inflation rate is going to be very different than people around you, which is why I want to cover a bunch of these different areas so that you can figure out what's your personal inflation rate is. I want you to take the categories that you use most. Maybe it's childcare, maybe it's eating out, maybe it's groceries, and I want you to pull those categories into play to figure out what's your personal inflation rate is. Because this is the number that we really need to know. It's going to be somewhat different for every single person. And this is why I laugh when people say, oh, personal finance
9:18 Andrew Giancola? is not personal for other people. Well, it's absolutely personal. The way that we spend our money, sure, it can be pretty similar time and time again, but it's very personal in terms of how we are looking at this and where our dollars are going. So inflation is just not one number. It's the combination of where you spend your dollars over time. That is what is going to matter most. Now, when I'm looking at some of these numbers, where did these come from? Well, the majority of these came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and most of these are pre-pandemic all the way up to mid 2026. So we also pulled some Case-Shiller Index data, we pulled some Freddie Mac data, we pulled some Kelly Blue Book data, and we pulled some LendingTree childcare aware data. So we have data from all over
10:00 Andrew Giancola? the place because we wanted to try to get you some of these numbers that matter most when we are thinking about this. So really, really important to note that this data is going to be a lot of it from the government data, but in addition, we pulled some Kelly Blue Book and other data just to support some of these cases so that we can dive deeper into each of these categories. So inflation is going to be something that is eating away at your wallet every single year. Now, before we dive deeper into this, you may be asking yourself, well, how do I combat against all of this? This is why we invest our money. This is why we get our dollars put to work, because otherwise inflation is going to eat away at your buying power every single year. And if you don't take care of this early, then you are going to have your buying power fall behind year over year. The folks who
10:45 Andrew Giancola? stuff cash under a mattress, or they just keep it in their savings account, they are losing value every single year. At the very least, at least put your money in a high-yield savings account so you can pace with inflation somewhat. This is where we really have to make sure that we Are considering where our dollars are going year in and year out because inflation will eat away at your buying power if you do not do this. Just imagine you made a hundred dollars in 2020. If you kept that in a savings account and did nothing else with it, that same hundred dollars is now worth seventy seven dollars. You are working backwards. You are literally losing money year in and year out if you don't get your dollars invested. So I beg you, each and every single person listening to this podcast, if you have not learned how to invest, this show is all
11:26 Andrew Giancola? about teaching you stuff like that. And so making sure that you learn how to invest is so incredibly important. We give you so many different guides on teaching you how to do this completely for free if you want to. So please, please, please make sure you're subscribed to this podcast if you have not done so already. So let's dive into category one. This is the big one. This is housing. Now, housing is one of those areas that can be the biggest wallet crusher for a lot of you. And for many folks out there, if you don't have kids, this is likely your largest line item that you have in your budget. Maybe you have a mortgage, maybe you rent. We're going to cover all those different areas today. And with each of these, my goal is to give you some tips on how to combat against some of these inflation rates so that you can make the best possible decision for you
12:10 Andrew Giancola? and your family. So this is the single biggest reason why most people feel strapped. This is the single biggest reason why most people feel stretched is because housing has gotten much more expensive over the last couple of years. In fact, let's look at the Schiller National Home Price Index. It rose from about 214 to about 327 in early 2026. Now, that is roughly a 53% jump in home values in just six years. I bought my house in the middle of COVID in 2020. I know that this number is pretty accurate in terms of tracking the value of my home. I track it pretty closely for the most part, and this is a pretty accurate number in my specific area. Some of you may have
12:53 Andrew Giancola? been shopping for homes over the course of the last six years and feel as though, wow, the price of houses just continued to go up. Now, over the course of the last year or so, we've seen it level out a little bit, but it is still something that it has gotten so much more expensive. Rents have continued to rise year over year. And so we can see a 53% jump in your biggest line item is why you feel so stressed and why you feel so pressured when it comes to your money. Now median existing home prices went from around 270,000 in early 2020 and guess what they are now? 417,700 in April of 2026. Now let me say this again, I'm going to say this throughout this episode, but it's very normal for home prices to go up.
13:34 Andrew Giancola? But for home prices to go up 53% in six years, that seems as though it's a little bit of a different story. And so we want to make sure that we are looking at this today because today's buyer is financing roughly a hundred thousand dollars more than a buyer did five years ago alone. My friends, that is wild. Just over waiting six years means that you're financing an extra hundred thousand dollars. That is a big, big deal. Now, what is the real killer here? It's gonna be mortgage payments. A typical monthly mortgage payment doubled from 2020 to now. So it's about roughly 1,100 in 2020 to around 2,200 by 2024 alone. Just over the course of that four years, you could see those mortgage payment double.
14:16 Andrew Giancola? Why? Interest rates rose, there was a big shift in that, but there was also just a lot of things that happened there. But it's also a double whammy because higher prices and higher rates means a 30-year fixed went from about 3.1% in January 2020 to 6.5% in June 2026. And some of those rates in between there, if you remember 2023 and 2024 were even higher than this. You need an income of roughly 117,000 to afford a median priced home now. But we know median wages are much lower than that. When we look at median wages, they're in the 70,000 range. And so this is something that really is an estimated 65% of households are actually priced out of the median housing.
14:57 Andrew Giancola? That's not good and I don't like that for any country whatsoever to be priced out of housing at 65% of being able to buy your own home. And I know a lot of you listening right now, your dream is to buy a home or maybe you already are a homeowner. And I want you to have that. I want you to have that for lifestyle reasons. It's not always for finance reasons. A lot of times it's for lifestyle reasons. And so we're going to continue to try to help you through this process so that you can find. Find ways to buy your home that you want. You can find ways to buy that dream home that you absolutely love. And it's going to take a little more work. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna sugarcoat this. It's gonna take a lot more work than it used to. But we gotta get real about the situation. And we're gonna have to either figure out, do we want to buy a home? Or do we want to continue renting? And in many scenarios, when you run total cost of ownership, we have a free calculator.
15:39 Andrew Giancola? If you go to mastermoney.co/resources, we have a free total cost of ownership calculator that will also show you buy versus rent. But when you run those numbers, it's going to be very important that you note exactly what is happening there. Okay, because you gotta understand, is it cheaper to buy? Is it cheaper to rent? And how much is my house gonna actually cost me? Not just the price of the mortgage, but everything else. Next, let's look at rent here because national rent is up nearly 24 to 30% since 2020, depending on where you live. The Sunbelt actually is one of those areas that got completely crushed. So Tampa, for example, where I live, the rents are about 50% since 2020. And St. Petersburg, same area, is about 56%. Now, rent shares actually went from 24% in 2020 to nearly 30% in 2025,
16:23 Andrew Giancola? crossing the cost burden line. Now, most areas in this country, you have seen rents rise. I know Austin, you have seen rents rise and then drop. Nashville, you have seen rents rise. Places like LA or New York, rents have been rising over the course of the last couple of years. And so this is where we have seen a big, big difference in a lot of people's budgets. We have to deal with some of these rents. And so because these rent prices are just continuing to go up, it does not feel as though you can get ahead because you have to pay 24 to 30% more than you did six years ago. Now, let's look at this for a second and think about, okay. Well, if the average inflation rate, a normal inflation rate is anywhere from 2 to 3%, then we could expect, okay, the last couple of years, 12, maybe 12 to 18% is where we need to be.
17:07 Andrew Giancola? But 24 to 30% takes you way above that number. And that's why you can also feel stretched. But in addition, property taxes, if you do own a home, are up 27% on average from 2019 to 2024 alone. And in states like Colorado and Georgia, it's been up more than 50%. I mean, it is absolutely wild. Homeowner's insurance is also up. So all these costs associated with housing are rising really Rapidly. And so home insurance premiums rose accumulate of forty six point eight percent nationally from twenty twenty to twenty twenty five alone. And I'm holding my head right now, as you can see, because this is just one of those things that the rising costs has been very, very rapid over the course of the last couple of years, which is why you feel stretched. Now, a buyer in twenty twenty
17:51 Andrew Giancola? six faces higher prices, double the monthly payment, higher taxes, and nearly fifty percent more for insurance. So if you feel strapped when it comes to your housing, this is exactly why. I want you to send this to a family member or friend if you're listening right now and you feel as though, wow, this is what I was looking for. I was looking for this data. I want you to send this because we're going to go through so much more of this stuff. So you understand why you feel stretched. You pair that in with having debt payments, you pair that in with lower wage increases, and all of a sudden, you've got a bad formula accumulating here, and we got to figure out a way to fix this. Okay. Next, let's talk about food for a second, because food at the grocery store is gonna be one of those things that is going to also make you feel as though you are stretched. Grocery prices or food at home, I'm not talking about takeout yet,
18:36 Andrew Giancola? food at home is up about twenty seven percent since twenty twenty. But the inflation Hall of Fame items shocked people way more than that, because there are things that have gone up way more than just the average price of food. Now, let's think about food for a second really quick before we dive into this. Part of this is, yeah, we've had this inflation rate, but we've also had shrink inflation come into play as well. That means the bags of goods that you are buying, or the piece, the item that you are buying, they're actually putting less inside of that specific bag to try to normalize prices, but they're also just increasing prices at the same times. You're getting less food for a higher price. And this is the total combination that's not even talked about enough in this equation. Now, the Inflation Hall of Fame, let's look at
19:20 Andrew Giancola? some of these here when it comes to food. Beef, ground beef went from about four dollars a pound to six seventy five per pound, roughly up seventy percent over the course of the last couple of years. Eggs, we know about the price of eggs, and they are up, they are down all the time, and sometimes eggs can get up to seven dollars a carton, depending on where you live. It is about 146% more expensive than mid 2020 to buy eggs. There's been a lot of reasons for that from bird flu peaks and eggs have been on just a violent roller coaster up and down. It feels like as though every time I go to the grocery store, it's like a $2 difference when you buy eggs. Coffee roughly doubled. Well, your boy always needs his cup of coffee. The price of coffee has doubled. Milk and dairy spiked nearly 22%.
20:03 Andrew Giancola? Bread, cereals, and bakeries are up steadily from 20 to 30% range, depending on what it is. Produce, fruits and vegetables were up about 6% year over year in 2026 alone. So the official grocery number right now is 27%. But the items that you actually notice, the things that you actually buy could be very different. So your personal grocery consumption inflation rate could be much higher than somebody else. But let's look at restaurants and fast food because sometimes to me, I don't know about you, sometimes it feels as though I just go out to eat is almost the same price as going to the grocery store sometimes. So let's look at that and see what the difference is between restaurants and food to something else. For example, one of the things that I always look at is the Chipotle bowl. I eat at Chipotle when I have to go somewhere fast or quick.
20:47 Andrew Giancola? And I remember just a couple of years ago, a Chipotle bowl was $9.50 for a double chicken bowl and it was a little bit more for a double chicken bowl. So I would buy that Chipotle bowl. I was happy. Then now I bought a double chicken Chipotle bowl last week, $16.50. Yeah, I just need the extra protein. I could get a single portion bowl, I know, but I want the double chicken bowl. And it was $16.50 and I think for most people out there, when you start to approach $17 to $20 for your food, that is really, really difficult to kind of get past. So food away from home consistently rose faster than people expected. It actually is up 30% since 2020 and restaurant prices broadly have climbed even more over that longer window.
21:29 Andrew Giancola? One tracker put the restaurant index 51% up over the last decade alone. Okay. Fast food took the most heat publicly. If you've gone to McDonald's or Chick-fil-A or Wendy's, wherever else you go, you know the value menu has basically died. Like they used to have the dollar menu, which was awesome for me in college, a place that I went to a ton, but labor costs, the cost of beef. Franchise pricing all stacked up basically took away that value menu and casual dining. So fast casual or casual dining is up about 3.8% year over year. Coffee shops have passed the doubling of wholesale coffee straight to your cup. And so that's why a latte is $7, $8 now when you go out and buy one. And delivery apps add an additional tax on top of this. So if you are buying Uber Eats regularly, or if you're buying DoorDash regularly, I'm sorry to say
22:14 Andrew Giancola? that is one of the financial sins that is hard to get over. We should do an episode called about all those financial sins. This is one of them that's hard for even me to get over. I still don't use delivery apps as someone who has worked really hard to build wealth. Why? Cause I can't stomach the extra fees. And it's something like every time my wife and I have a long day and we're like, should we just get Uber Eats to drive? And we're both just looking at each other like, I guess not, we're gonna go pick something up. And there's a very small period of time where I will do it. But for the most part, it's just hard for me to even get over. I'm someone who likes to spend, like I'm a spender now and I still am someone who cannot get over the cost of Uber Eats. So that just adds an additional fee on top of all of this. All right. So that's just food costs alone.
22:57 Andrew Giancola? So the price of food has risen at least 30%. You can check your own personal inflation rate and kind of see where you think that should land. But for a lot of you, 30% over six years again is pretty high, at least 12% over where it should be. And so for most of us, we want to make sure that we are thinking through this, but also factoring in shrinkflation. They're giving you less, but you're paying more. So what are some of the things that you can do when it comes to food and making sure that you are doing the best? Well, first is shopping and pricing out the food on where you're getting it. So I like to shop at Aldi a lot. Aldi has lower prices in my areas than most other things. It's lower than Walmart, it's lower than Publix, which is in my area. It's lower than any of the major grocery stores. Costco is also another great option if you have a larger family.
23:41 Andrew Giancola? Costco or Sam's Club can be something where if you price it out, it actually prices out from a lot of studies lately as some of the lowest priced items per item. So those are two things to look into is Costco and/or Aldi. I just don't love fighting against the Costco rush on times when I can get there. So that is one of those other areas. Next. Let's talk about transportation, okay? Because transportation is a big one. I think a lot of people are allowing transportation to eat into their budget significantly. I think it's one of the biggest wealth killers in this country. The way you win with vehicles is to drive them longer in terms of buying a vehicle outright and making sure that you have the payments for four years or less when you buy a vehicle and then driving it longer.
24:24 Andrew Giancola? And typically, when I buy a vehicle, I want it to be two to three years used because it already took that depreciation hit. That's two massive savings upfront already. Massive savings, number one, is that the depreciation hit has already been taken. Massive savings, number two, is that you're driving it longer, so you're not cycling payments long term. Those are the two things that then you want to run total cost of ownership, obviously. But those are the two things as a starting point, that if you get those two things right, you will be able to win with cars if you shop properly. But let's look at the cost of cars, because I want to show you how much this has changed over time, okay? The average new car price went from about $38,000 in early 2020 to about $49,000 to $50,000 in 2025 and 2026.
25:08 Andrew Giancola? The average transaction price hit an all time high of about $50,326 at the end of 2025. That is roughly a 27% increase. Wowza. The average new car payment is around $750 to $940 per month. And that makes me want to just absolutely put both hands over my face, because this is one of those things that $750 to $940 per month going to a depreciating asset is so hard to stomach. Every single person listening right now out there that's like, maybe I should get a new car, but you're living paycheck to paycheck? Don't. Keep driving that thing. Keep whipping that thing around town.
25:53 Andrew Giancola? Be proud of that paid off car that you've got. Be proud of that vehicle that you got because that's the new status symbol. That's the new stealth wealth status symbol. Hey, if you've got a paid off car, let me know down in the comments below. And let me know what you got too, and how long you plan on driving that thing. Even take a picture with a thumbs up next to it if you want to. I want to see your paid off cars. Why? Because this is the new status symbol. We don't need brand new cars anymore. You want to take on a $900 car payment every single month? You know what $900 could do if you invested those dollars instead? The compound interest is absolutely crazy on $900 over the course of 30 years. So let me just tell you right now, making sure that you drive a paid off car for the long term, 10 years or more is the new status symbol. But let's look at the price of used cars as well.
26:37 Andrew Giancola? Because used cars are going to be one of those things that are even higher than new cars. So the pandemic poster child of used cars, I remember when they shot up really quickly. It was the first time ever, I bought my truck. I bought a used truck, a 2018 truck in 2019. It was a year old and had about 12,000 or 13,000 miles on it. And it's an F-150. I bought it for $24,000 in 2019. Then 2020 hit. And when 2020 hit and 2021 hit and the cost of used cars rose, that same truck that I bought for $24,000 was worth $38,000 just two years later, which I've never seen in my entire life. And some of you may have remembered this as well, where you looked at your vehicle pressure like, what the heck is going on?
27:20 Andrew Giancola? This is worth more than what I paid for this and it's used. And that was the weirdest thing that could ever happen. Well, here it is. Used prices are still up 30 to 33% higher than the pre pandemic, with the average used listing around $26,900 in 2026. This is the single biggest jump and the single biggest jump was in 2020 to 2021. That's exactly what I'm talking about right here, where the CPI rose 27% in one year. Here's the other crazy part. Now, the cost of gas is also rising up 47% versus the pre pandemic baseline. And the biggest spike was obviously 2026 with the war. So again, that's going to impact your dollars long term. Auto repairs. This is one that maybe you don't notice. Until you kind of get into the repair shop,
28:02 Andrew Giancola? but they are up about forty six to forty eight percent since two thousand and twenty. There's been a lot of labor shortages. I just saw Ford came out and said they are looking for thousands of mechanics and they want to pay him a hundred and fifty thousand dollars per year and they can't find them. There's a big labor shortage in the blue collar industry. Everyone's going to college and there is not enough people to work the blue collar industry. And so the cost or the wages in those industries are going to go up. It's a basic supply and demand. When there is low supply, prices are going to go up. So if you're someone out there is like, I'm making forty thousand dollars per year and I went to college, hey, look at the trades. The trades are very interesting right now. You can make a lot of money as electrician. You can make a lot of money as a plumber and these are going to be things that are going to rise over time. So if you bought a brand new car, if you bought a used car and you feel as though you're getting stretched, these are the reasons why.
28:47 Andrew Giancola? And for me, I want you to follow our twenty four, twelve, ten rule. What does that mean? Twenty percent down, four years or less on your car payment, twelve percent or less spent on maintenance and car payments. So seven percent towards your car payment and five percent towards maintenance and then drive the car ten years or longer. That is how you win with cars is following specific parameters. So you don't overspend on cars. If you just buy a car willy nilly and say, oh, I can afford the payment, that is the wrong way to think about that. Wealthy people do not look at car payments. Wealthy people look at the total cost of ownership to see if they can afford it. Next is insurance. Now, this is one that is one of those stealth wealth areas that is very hard to see.
29:29 Andrew Giancola? We just did an episode recently with Bob Litterman, talking about the rising cost of insurance, especially home insurance and some other areas and reasons why that happened. But there are all these different categories of insurance that have seen a rising cost. And we're going to talk about health. We're going to talk about auto. We're going to talk about homeowners. We're going to talk about umbrella today. And we're going to look first at health insurance. So health insurance is up about fifty five percent versus the pre pandemic timeframe. And so this is one of those areas that you have a little bit of power here. Why? Because you can shop your auto insurance around. We're going to leave a link down in the show notes below of our link where you can actually shop auto insurance and look at a bunch of other carriers really quickly. I highly recommend that you do this once every single year at a minimum when your auto insurance.
30:10 Andrew Giancola? Insurance is up. You need to shop your auto insurance because you could save hundreds of dollars every single year. If you don't do it, then somebody else is just gonna be getting more than they need to for the same exact policy. You need to shop your policy around. Do not be loyal just because you want to be loyal. Because this is up 55%. So it's up to you to try to battle this back. And this goes for all of these different policies, okay? Homeowners is up a cumulative 46.8% nationally from 2020 to 2025. And states like Arizona, Nebraska, and Utah saw a 40 to 70% jump. Florida and California have also seen really rapid rises. Health insurance. Health insurance has been brutal also. And some of you may not feel it as much if you have your employer paying or taking on a lot of this.
30:55 Andrew Giancola? But the ACA Marketplace premium has jumped up about 26% in 2026 alone. And for subsidized enrollees, out-of-pocket premium costs rose about 114% in 2026. And there has been a lot of big shifts there. Employer-sponsored plan coverage has risen about 6.5% in 2026 alone. And there are areas of the country where it's risen even more. It's kind of amazing how much can change in just a single year. Every summer, the kids are a little bigger, a little more independent, and life looks a little different than it did the year before. And it reminds me that while we can't predict the future, we can prepare for it. That's one of the reasons I like PolicyGenius. See, PolicyGenius isn't an insurance company.
31:40 Andrew Giancola? They're an online marketplace that lets you compare life insurance quotes from some of America's top insurers, side by side, for free. And their licensed team helps you compare coverage, prices, and terms, answers your questions, and even handles the paperwork so you can get the right policy without the hassle. For me, having life insurance isn't about expecting something to happen. It's about knowing my family is protected so I can actually enjoy these moments together instead of worrying about what comes next. And with PolicyGenius, you can find 20-year life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for $1 million of coverage. Head to policygenius.com to compare life insurance. ...quotes from top companies and see how much you can save.
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36:00 Andrew Giancola? privacy in mind. It only runs across approved business applications. User level data is anonymous by default and sensitive information is automatically redacted and never leaves your firewall. To see optimization action, head describe.how/pfp and mention PFP for a 30-day risk-free trial. That's S C R I B E dot H O W slash P F P. It has been a huge problem in the rising cost of health insurance. It is one that if you do retire early or you're planning on retiring sooner, you want to make sure you're factoring this in because it has been rising around 7% per year over the course of the last couple of years. And it is really, really going to be a problem that I think is going to be something we got to watch out for as time goes on.
36:44 Andrew Giancola? So health insurance is another one that I want to make sure that each and every single one of you is being cautious about shopping your plans. And if your employer has a plan in place, just making sure you are choosing the right plan for your situation and not overpaying for health insurance, especially if you're young, make sure you have the right plan in place for you specifically. Next up is utilities. So utilities is a bill that hits every single month and these small increases may not be noticeable upfront, but they are something that is happening more and more and more. So let's talk about this for a second. Electricity, this is the big one that most of you may have noticed and many people blame a number of different things from data centers to the electric companies are having new build outs. And when they do those new build outs, they actually pass the costs on to you. There's a lot of actually problems with this industry,
37:27 Andrew Giancola? but this is up roughly 31 to 47%, depending on where you live since 2020, depending on the measure in the climbing about 4% alone into 2026. Why? Well, natural gas prices have gone up. There have been, you know, aging equipment that needs to be upgraded. They've been put lines underground. There's a lot of different things, but the AI data center expansion is also a big part of this. Texas alone is projected to need about 66% of all the new US electricity demand in 2026. That is one that's a mounting problem that we need to keep an eye on as time goes on here. Natural gas, the most volatile of all, is residential gas roughly doubled over that five year window. And it is something that if you have natural gas going to your house, or you need it for heating purposes, or you need it for other purposes, that is another big deal.
38:12 Andrew Giancola? Water bill is roughly 33 to 59%. And cell phone service is one that is actually flat to slightly down over the course of the last couple of years. That is one of the bright spots in this entire CPI index is that cell phone services is slightly down over that timeframe. I feel as though my cell phone bill hasn't increased much at all. That is a good thing for a lot of you and for me. I think that, uh, cause that That is one area that is a necessity as at this point in time. And so one of our necessities at least is staying flat. When it comes to utilities, there's not a ton that you can do right now. In terms of trying to save on that, we just recently did a video where I was reacting to this girl. Basically saying that she did everything she possibly could to save money on electricity. And her bill still went actually up the next month.
38:55 Andrew Giancola? So there's a lot of things there that I think for most people are really, really struggling with. And the reason why I know they're struggling with that is that video that we, I was just talking about there. It did about 6 million views on social media. So this is something I know a lot of people are having to struggle through. And if you feel as though your utilities are climbing, there are things that you can do. There's efficient ways that you can add things to your home. But sometimes it may not be worth the cost of those upgrades. For example, if you put in brand new windows all across your house, that may cost you $40,000 to do all of that. And so you really need to figure out, okay, is the savings worth it? And is this something I actually want to do? Am I going to be staying in this home for a very long period of time? So a lot of things that are going to be shifting there. But I think this is one of those most important areas to just continue to monitor and understand that the prices are going up.
39:40 Andrew Giancola? And that we need to know. Let's look at travel next because a lot of people do not realize that their vacation that used to cost $5,000 can quietly now be costing $7,000 to $8,000. I've been planning some family vacations this summer. And I feel as though they're a lot more expensive than they used to be. Just over the course of the last couple of years, and I keep scratching my head like, what the heck is going on here? But then I looked at these numbers and I go, oh, that's why. So hotels are up roughly 25 to 30% since 2020. And airfare, which is going to be volatile based on fuel charges and all those different things. It has actually swung down in some recent stretches, but then gone back up over the course of the last couple of months because of airfare. Rental cars have spiked enormously during the pandemic.
40:20 Andrew Giancola? And a lot of companies have been selling fleets and they have been selling fleets cheaper than, than maybe even some car lots, which I think is interesting. Even theme parks, you look at a ticket for Disney World, for example, used to be $159. Now it's $209 for a single day. And this is going to be something that, you know, if you have family members or you take them to theme parks, that could be something you could feel. And even cruises are up meaningfully. A Disney three to five night cruise now runs. $1,400 to $1,900 and a comparable room used to be 550 to 710 on something like the Royal Caribbean. And so the premium product inflated, has inflated the hardest. Obviously, most of Disney things are very, very expensive when you think about this. So for many of you, you may feel as though vacations have gotten a lot more expensive.
41:02 Andrew Giancola? It used to be, you know, you'd spend $1,000 to $2,000 for a family vacation. Now it's five, you used to spend $5,000 for a family vacation. Now it's eight. And so you really are feeling the difference there when you are booking some of that stuff. Next, let's look at healthcare. So here's the surprise of healthcare, okay? So Medicare CPI was up only about 2.6% year over year in 2026. And medical care has risen well below the 29% headline since 2020. So why does healthcare feel brutal then? Why does it feel like something that's been really shifting over time? The pain is not the per visit price. It is the premiums and out of pocket structure that we have here that I think is really, really important to note.
41:42 Andrew Giancola? And for most people out there, again, the average healthcare increase that you are seeing most likely over the course of the last couple of years has been right around 7%. When you factor in all the insurances and everything else that is happening. And so we need to figure out a way to fix this and it is gonna be a long haul before we can fix all this stuff. But the healthcare pricing is gonna be a big problem over time. And making sure that you factor in healthcare into your retirement plan is very, very important. Most people, when they spend money in retirement, they look at it, okay, the early years, they're gonna spend a little more because they're going on more adventures, you're traveling more, you're doing more fun things. In the middle of their retirement, they actually spend less. And so they call this the retirement spending smile, where early years they're spending more.
42:24 Andrew Giancola? In the middle, they spend less and then they spend a lot more at the end of retirement because of healthcare needs. And so you want to make sure that you have factored that in. When you are planning that retirement, it is really, really important to make sure that you do that. Now, the next section, we're gonna be talking to all my parents out there. Because this is one of those areas that I know a lot of you are feeling. And if you are a parent, then you are feeling this heavy and hard. Because if you have kids, childcare costs are rising rapidly. And the cost of having children is rising. Rapidly. So this may be the single most painful category for most of you out there. This may be your highest cost category out there. And if those of you are thinking about kids, you need to understand these costs so that you can budget out for this. Let's talk about daycare first.
43:07 Andrew Giancola? Now daycare is a season for a lot of us out there, but many of you know that from 2020 to 2024, daycare was up about 29%, which is much, much faster than the average window should be. The national average is roughly 15,000 to $18,000 per year for one child in a center-based daycare. Infant care can rise even higher to about $20,000 per year. I know in my specific area, our kids, we paid around $10,000 per year in daycare per child. And sometimes that would go up depending on some of the extra care. Childcare for one infant now exceeds in-state public college tuition in 38 states.
43:49 Andrew Giancola? So you are literally paying for college if you have an infant in daycare in up to 38 states. This is up from 33 before the pandemic. And the federal pandemic childcare grant, $24 billion, expired in September of 2024, leaving providers with about a $1,500 a month gap that they passed on to families. Plus, what are you doing this summertime? So summertime, there are summer camps and youth sports and school activities. So for us specifically, we right now, I'm in the middle of summer when I'm recording this episode. One of my kids is going to kindergarten and one of them is going into second grade. And so for each of them, we pay anywhere from $200, $250 per camp per week for each of them during the summer when they go to camps. Now they love going to camps. They really enjoy it. So we send them there.
44:34 Andrew Giancola? Obviously, we don't have to send them every single week, but it is something to get them out of the house and they enjoy it. But you could think about that, that adds up to about $2,000 every single month in the summertime when you were looking at summer camps. And so this is one of those things that can run a family over the course of the summer, just about $3,000 to $10,000 over the course of the summer, depending on how many kids that you have. In addition, if you have kids and some of these other things. Plus, if you have travel sports or you have other things that you are doing, that cost can continue to rise. Then college tuition. One of the most muted categories on this entire list, tuition is up 4.7% from early 2020. In fact, some of the numbers are coming back that if you injustice for inflation, tuition is actually kind of flat or slowly going down over the course of the last couple of years.
45:19 Andrew Giancola? Now, private colleges are actually even discounting at record levels and over 15% average discount has been what they have shown at a lot of private colleges nationwide. So there's a lot of expenses for parents right now. And if you are just on a fine line and you're a parent, just know if you have kids, it gets way harder in terms of trying to manage your finances. And that's not a reason not to have kids, but it is a reason to make sure that you get your finances in order first. Make sure you have that emergency fund in place. Make sure that you have enough cash on hand to take care of any emergencies because they're going to happen. Making sure that you understand what the costs are going to be before you take this on. Because if both parents have to work and you have to send your kids to daycare, just know how expensive this is going to be.
46:03 Andrew Giancola? If you don't do that, run the math to figure out if they should be in daycare or not. If one parent should stay home and the other should go to work. But this is going to be the big family takeaway. This is going to be a big line item in your budget and it's going to be a big line item that you're going to have to deal with. And you want to make sure that you understand the costs and the implications of this. Now, there are some other hidden inflation categories that I want to talk through here. Let's talk through a couple. Streaming services are up roughly 100% since 2020. And you may feel this. For example, Netflix's standard pricing is up 100% over this period. Disney Plus, launched at $6.99, is up over 150%. And every service has raised its prices and added tiers. So cord cutting has actually just caused us to probably pay more than we would with cable. So software subscriptions have gone up.
46:48 Andrew Giancola? Gym memberships up with labor and real estate. And so those have risen over that timeframe and professional services like tax prep and legal and accounting, all up with wages. Plus HOA fees, if you do have a HOA fee, that's another hidden cost that I think a lot of people are dealing with. Those are also up year over year. And because of the maintenance costs and all the other things that gets passed on down to the homeowner. So I would love for you to run an audit right now. Audit your subscriptions. And figure out exactly how much you're spending every single month. Is it $200 a month? Is it $400 a month? Try to cut some of that down so that you can reduce that overall cost. Now, there's also some inflation traps for high earners. If you're a high earner and you're like, well, I've been making more money and I feel as though I'm slowly getting ahead here.
47:31 Andrew Giancola? I want you to just watch out for some of these inflation traps because there are some out there. Private school is $13,000 to $50,000 plus per year per child and climbing. Country club memberships, they're up $50,000 in 2022. Nicer neighborhoods is up 50% plus. Plus, travel sports, $3,000 to $10,000 per kid. Luxury travel is way up and upgraded homes are way up. So if you are someone who enjoys the finer things in life, you are most likely paying a lot more for some of your costs. And guess what? This is the reason why most high earners are living paycheck to paycheck. In fact, a recent study came out and said 67% of high earners are living paycheck to paycheck. And those are folks making over $150,000 per year are still living paycheck to paycheck. So if you have a lot of those different things that we're talking about right there, that's another reason why.
48:16 Andrew Giancola? Now, what hasn't gone up much? So we've given you a lot of bad news in this episode, but there are some areas that may not have gone up as much as some of these other categories. And so I want you to understand some of these areas so that you can see, okay, well, should we double down on some of this stuff? But in reality, this is probably just all consumer things. So let's talk about this. TVs, TVs are actually cheaper. And most of us are like, well, yeah, and they also don't break. So we've had them for the last five to seven years, but they're down roughly nine to 10% year over year in some stretches. And they are far cheaper than they were five years ago. I mean, you could walk in right now and go get a TV for a couple hundred bucks and it's a really nice TV that lasts a while. Electronics broadly also are about the same prices. So computers and audio equipment and video gear, all that stuff is actually flat to down.
48:59 Andrew Giancola? So this is what actually causes the CPI to not even be as high as it should be. Smartphones are down sharply in CPI terms and have gone down over the course of the last couple of years. Basically with the rising rate of inflation, smartphones have basically stayed the same price for that timeframe. Apparel, meaning clothing and those types of things are roughly flat. And in some segments like infant and toddler clothing, it's actually gone down a little bit. Software tools are about the same. College tuition is actually down in real terms. If you actually look at the adjusted for inflation prices, it's actually down in real terms. And then index fund expense ratio, obviously that's a quiet winner, but it is a big deal for most of us. Those have gone down over the course of the last couple of years as well, which for some of us is going to be a big, big six-figure differential there
49:45 Andrew Giancola? just from index fund expense ratios alone. So here's the big question that I want you to ask yourself. And this is why we wanted to do this episode. If your income rose 25% over the course of the last six years, if you were making $100,000 per year and all of a sudden you're making $125,000 per year, you actually are making the same amount or less than you did just a few years ago. And so when we think about this, we want to look at things like salary growth, whereas the median household income is up about 24% nominally since 2020, but only up about 5% in real terms. And so we need to make sure that we are fighting for those raises that we deserve just to make sure that we are outpacing inflation.
50:29 Andrew Giancola? Two, household spending growth. I want you to actually map your actual spending categories. I want you to think about how much you're spending in each of these different categories and understand what your inflation rate has been. The cool thing about budgeting, one cool thing about budgeting that I love, if you use a tool like Monarch Money, for example, is if you've been budgeting for a while, you can actually go back and look at the charts that they have or the sheets and you can run reports to figure out how much you've been spending in different categories over the years. And so when we do things like this, every five years or 10 years, you look at, you know, how much you've been spending on some of these categories, you can understand what the prices have been and your personal inflation rate, which is very important to know because then you could factor that in to things like your retirement plan. And so when you think about your own personal inflation rate, this is a little bit of an advanced strategy,
51:13 Andrew Giancola? but if you do budget, it allows you to collect that data over that timeframe. This is why I'm a big proponent of budgeting tools instead of just using a spreadsheet, because you can collect data and kind of see where your spending is going. Three, is you need to make sure that your net worth is growing. If your net worth is not growing, then look at why and look at those areas that have maybe risen that are outside of your control and see if there's ways that You can find Delta there. See if there's ways that you can find more money in those specific categories. And here's the reality is inflation didn't just, you know, cause us to have to spend more. It put people in two different categories. Those with assets are going to continue to see those assets to rise because at least the stock market has done very well over the course of the last six years. Those who do not have assets are just slowly falling behind.
51:58 Andrew Giancola? And you need to make sure that you understand how to invest your money. Because this is the only way to outpace some of these numbers, especially right now in 2026, is to make sure that you are outpacing some of this stuff. And to make sure that your dollars are growing over time. The only way to retire, and I cannot say this enough, is to make sure you're investing your money. And so a 25% raise for you may feel like progress, but with the current prices increasing over the course of the last couple of years, we know that that's actually you falling behind. And so I don't make this episode to make you feel bad. I make this episode so you understand what's going on and you can focus on those areas that you can control to make a difference in your own financial situation.
52:42 Andrew Giancola? If you start doing that, it'll absolutely change the way you see money. And it'll change the way that you and your family approach things when it comes to money. And that's how it should be. You should approach things differently based on data, which is why we do these data heavy episodes, so that you can take this information and use it for common good for you and your family. Listen, if you guys are interested in getting more help from me, or you want to be able to be on actual weekly Q and A calls and coaching calls with me every single week, I would love to invite you to join Master Money Academy. Free trial for seven days down below in the show notes that you could check it out. Come check out our courses, come meet some of the people in the community. Would love for you to, to join us and you can get a live call with me and, and chat with me, or just check out some of our live calls and see if it's for you.
53:26 Andrew Giancola? If it's not for you, no worries whatsoever, no hard feelings. We don't want anybody in there that they're not going to get value out of this. Would love to have you in there if you are interested. The link is down below in the show notes. Listen, thank you guys so much for being here on this episode. I hope you got a ton of value out of this data in this episode and you are putting together action items of what you are going to do to conquer some of this stuff. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you being here and we will see you on the next episode.
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Previous Should I Chase a Higher Savings Rate? Can We Semi-Retire in Our 40s? How Do We Rebuild After Bankruptcy? (Money Q&A) Next The Retirement Mistake 80% of Investors Make (with Vanguard's Lead Researcher) Page updated October 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated