For families that use SNAP benefits, what the card can buy is starting to depend on the state. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved a wave of state waivers that bar SNAP dollars from purchasing soda, candy, and similar items, and after a court paused several of them, roughly 18 states now have restrictions…

For a family stretching a grocery budget, it helps to know the ceiling on food assistance. This year, the most a family of four can receive in SNAP benefits, the program still widely called food stamps, is $994 a month in most of the country. That figure sets the top of the scale, and while…

The weekly grocery run remains one of the clearest places households feel inflation, and the latest numbers show the squeeze has eased but not disappeared. Grocery prices are up 2.7% over the past year, with the produce aisle leading the way as fruits and vegetables climbed about 5%. There was some relief too, on meat,…

Prices crept higher again in July, and the pump is still where households feel the sting most. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that consumer prices rose 0.1% for the month, a return to rising prices after they slipped in June, and sat 3.4% above where they were a year ago. Gasoline actually fell over…

Lettuce costs about a third more than it did last June. Tomatoes cost roughly a fifth more. Fresh vegetables as a group ran close to 10 percent above where they sat a year earlier, and for a household that buys more or less the same list every week, the produce section is where the grocery…

Forty gallons a month is an ordinary amount of fuel for one household with one commuting driver. At the second quarter’s pump prices, that tank-and-a-half habit cost roughly $168 a month. At the price the federal government now projects for the last three months of the year, the same 40 gallons runs about $136. The…

June brought measurable relief in the national gasoline index after a sharp run-up, but drivers were still paying from a much higher base than a year earlier. The two percentages describe different comparisons, and together they explain why a household can see prices retreat without feeling that fuel is cheap again. The monthly drop and…