Category: Cost of Living
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The White House pledge meant to keep data centers off household power bills is voluntary, and 317 companies have signed
A White House pledge asks the companies building America’s data centers to promise something no regulator has ever required of them: covering every dollar of the power infrastructure their machines need, so the bill does not land on a household account instead. Two hundred sixty-three million Americans now live somewhere covered by that promise, and…
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Toledo’s median rent is $916, against $3,844 in San Francisco
A one-bedroom renter moving from Toledo, Ohio to San Francisco would need to more than quadruple their housing budget just to keep a similar-sized apartment. Toledo’s overall median rent sits at $916 a month as of August 2026, the lowest of the 100 largest U.S. cities tracked by Apartment List. San Francisco’s median rent is…
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Marketplace enrollment is down by 3 million people after premium payments jumped this year
Nearly three million fewer people were enrolled in an Affordable Care Act marketplace plan in early 2026 than a year earlier, and the households that kept their coverage watched their monthly premium bill climb sharply at the same time. The two trends line up on the calendar: enhanced federal premium tax credits that had capped…
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The 10 percent global import surcharge expired July 24 and was replaced by tariffs on 60 economies
A tariff that touched nearly every imported product sold in the United States quietly expired this summer, and it did not go away so much as get replaced by something more targeted. The change matters for anyone assuming the extra 10 percent tacked onto import costs since February is still showing up in store prices…
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Phoenix, Dallas, Houston and Atlanta see the federal rent ceiling drop October 1 while Los Angeles and Chicago climb
Two of the country’s largest rental markets got more room to charge under a federal rent ceiling this fall, while five others got less. Los Angeles and Chicago are among the metro areas where HUD’s newly published Fair Market Rents rose sharply for fiscal year 2027, effective October 1, 2026. Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, San Diego…
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A 90-day duty break on imported beef trimmings runs through November, aimed at ground beef that cost 9.4 percent more in the latest reading
Ground beef has been one of the more painful line items at the register this year, and the White House is trying a temporary fix: a 90-day window that lets more imported beef trimmings into the country at a lower tariff rate so processors can blend it with U.S. beef for ground beef. The relief…
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Home insurance rose in 45 states and the District of Columbia last year, and held flat or fell in only five
Home insurance premiums climbed in nearly every corner of the country in 2025, according to a report the insurance-comparison company Insurify published in March 2026. Prices rose in 45 states and Washington, D.C., while only five states saw rates hold level or move lower. For a typical household, that increase rarely arrives as its own…
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The heating-bill assistance program starts its new year October 1 with no money appropriated and a White House proposal to end it
The federal program that helps millions of lower-income households cover winter heating bills opens its new grant year on October 1 without a single dollar appropriated to run it. That gap sits next to a separate fact reported this year by the grant recipients and trade groups that track the program closely: the administration’s budget…
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Certain Canadian dairy and alcoholic beverages will be barred from entering the United States on September 29
Canadian cheese, butter, and a range of Canadian beer, wine, and spirits are set to disappear from the list of goods U.S. importers can legally bring in, once a White House order takes effect at the end of the month. The change follows months of escalating tariff action between Washington and Ottawa, and it means…
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HUD’s new rent ceilings fall in 466 areas on October 1, covering places where more than a third of Americans live
The federal government just reset the maximum rent it will help cover in more than 2,600 housing markets across the country, and in a large share of them, the new number is smaller than last year’s. The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fiscal Year 2027 Fair Market Rents take effect October 1, 2026. In…
