Category: Cost of Living
-
Candy and sweets are running 7.1 percent higher, the grocery store’s second-fastest riser
Chocolate bars, bagged candy, and gum are getting measurably more expensive this year, and the increase shows no sign of leveling off before Halloween. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest grocery price forecast puts sugar and sweets on track for one of the steepest increases of any food category tracked in 2026, trailing only beef…
-
Electricity costs three times more in California than in New Mexico, and Hawaii’s rate rose 35.5 percent in a year
California households now pay nearly three times as much for electricity as households in New Mexico, and the gap is only getting wider in parts of the country. Federal energy data covering June 2026 puts a 19.54-cent-per-kilowatt-hour spread between the priciest and cheapest states in the lower 48, while Hawaii’s average electricity revenue jumped more…
-
Two orders on ranchers were signed Friday, and neither one changes the price of beef
President Trump signed two executive orders on the cattle industry at the White House on Friday, September 4, both framed as wins for ranchers. Grocery shoppers scanning the price of ground beef might assume that kind of presidential attention to the beef supply chain comes with a number attached — a rebate, a cap, a…
-
A new order tells USDA to let small meat processors ship across state lines
A state-inspected meat plant in most of the country cannot legally ship a single package across a state line. An executive order signed September 4, 2026 directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture to widen the narrow federal programs that make an exception, so small, state-inspected processors can sell their beef, pork and poultry beyond their…
-
USDA has 90 days to decide whether beef gets a country-of-origin label again
President Trump signed an executive order on September 4, 2026, giving the U.S. Department of Agriculture three months to figure out whether it can legally force grocery stores to disclose where beef comes from. The instruction sits inside a broader ranchers’ order that also touches grazing land and predator control, but for household grocery budgets,…
-
Anthem owes Sentara $105 million on claims past 90 days, the system says
Virginia’s largest hospital system says the state’s biggest health insurer has stopped paying its bills on time. Sentara Health told Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Virginia this summer that the insurer owes more than $105 million in claims already 90 days past due, on top of two smaller billing disputes. The fight over that…
-
Beef is on track to cost 9.8 percent more this year, the fastest rise of any grocery category
American shoppers reaching for ground beef, steak or a roast this year are absorbing one of the steepest single-category price increases in the supermarket. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service now forecasts that beef and veal prices will climb 9.8 percent over the course of 2026, the fastest rise among the fifteen food-at-home…
-
Households paid 18.34 cents a kilowatt-hour in June, and 43 states plus Washington paid more than a year earlier
The average U.S. household paid 18.34 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity it used in June, according to the federal government’s own tally of what utilities actually billed customers. That figure is 5 percent higher than the same month a year earlier, and residential customers absorbed a bigger increase than either businesses or factories did.…
-
Insurance now takes 14 percent of the average homeowner’s monthly mortgage payment
Homeowners insurance has quietly become one of the largest recurring costs layered onto a monthly mortgage bill. New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas finds that for the average homeowner nationally, the insurance premium now equals 14 percent of the monthly payment covering mortgage principal and interest, up from 10 percent in 2013.…
-
Car insurance is projected to rise in 32 states in the second half, after Connecticut drivers absorbed an extra $251
Full-coverage car insurance premiums are climbing again after a rare year of relief, and the increase is landing unevenly across the country. Insurify, an online insurance marketplace, found that average full-coverage rates rose in 27 states during the first half of 2026, reversing a nationwide 6% decline logged in 2025. Connecticut absorbed the steepest increase…