Category: Cost of Living
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California diesel passed $7.21 a gallon, $1.62 above the national average
California’s price for on-highway diesel fuel crossed $7.20 a gallon last week, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s weekly survey, the highest of any state in the country and more than a dollar sixty above the national average. Most households don’t buy diesel directly, but the fuel that moves trucks, freight and delivery vehicles…
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West Coast drivers are paying $5.21 a gallon while the Gulf Coast pays $3.62
Drivers on the West Coast are paying close to a dollar sixty more per gallon than drivers on the Gulf Coast, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s latest weekly survey. The gap isn’t a fluke of one bad week; it’s the widest split of any two regions EIA tracks, and it actually grew last…
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Gasoline fell 25 cents in Colorado and 18 cents in Ohio last week while the national average barely moved
Gasoline prices moved in sharply different directions across the country last week, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s weekly survey of retail stations. While the national average barely budged, drivers in Colorado, Ohio and a couple of other states saw some of the steepest single-week declines the agency logged all year. For households in…
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Delivery costs $18.71 per thousand cubic feet on a home gas bill
Most of a home’s natural gas bill has nothing to do with the price of the gas itself. Federal data published August 31, 2026 show the residential price of natural gas averaged $24.09 per thousand cubic feet in June 2026, while the wholesale citygate price, what a local utility actually paid to receive that same…
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A single-room unit gets three quarters of the studio rent ceiling
Not every voucher-assisted household needs a full apartment. Some HUD-funded housing covers a single furnished room with shared bathroom or kitchen facilities, and the agency prices that unit type differently than anything else in its rent schedule. Under the fiscal year 2027 fair market rents HUD published September 1, 2026, effective October 1, a single-room-occupancy…
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Every bedroom above four adds 15 percent to the federal rent ceiling a housing voucher will cover
Every October, the Department of Housing and Urban Development recalculates the rent ceilings that decide how much a Housing Choice Voucher will actually cover, and this year’s update takes effect October 1, 2026. Most of that math tracks what a family would really pay to rent a two-bedroom apartment nearby. But once a household needs…
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Homes used slightly less electricity this year and paid 5 percent more, while businesses used 3.4 percent more
The average U.S. household paid noticeably more for electricity in June 2026, even though it used a little less of it. That’s the finding inside the Energy Information Administration’s latest Electricity Monthly Update, released August 26, 2026 with June 2026 data. Residential electricity sales edged down for the month, but the average price residential customers…
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New York regulators cut health insurers’ 2027 request from 20.6 percent to 6 percent, saving about $1.6 billion
New York’s insurance regulator just did something most states haven’t: it finished the job. On September 4, 2026, the state Department of Financial Services approved final 2027 health insurance premiums for the individual and small-group markets, and the number that survived is a fraction of what insurers originally asked for. If you’ve seen headlines this…
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Home prices rose 2.1 percent over the year, the slowest in a decade, and fell in four states
The government’s broadest measure of home values rose just 2.1 percent over the year ending in June, the smallest year-over-year gain the Federal Housing Finance Agency has logged for a second quarter in more than a decade. If you already own a home, that slowdown is quietly changing how much equity you can borrow against.…
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Farm egg prices fell 82 percent this year while store prices fell 31
A carton of eggs that cost close to $6 during last year’s bird-flu shortage is cheaper again this fall, but not nearly as cheap as the price farmers are now getting. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service forecasts that farm-level egg prices will end 2026 down 82.1 percent from 2025, while the price…
