Most pages on The Tea Leaves measure conditions you can react to. This one tracks whether your sense of being pinched is shared. The chart below shows how much of disposable income, on average, US households spend on essentials — housing, food, energy, healthcare, transportation. The tiles break it down. None of these change quickly; they're for sanity-checking your situation against the broader picture.
Essentials Share of Disposable Income
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%
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Costs
share of disposable income going to each essential
Incomes
what households have to work with
Stress
how households are holding up under the pressure