AI Summary
5 min readThe email that stood out to the Planet Money team came from Lindsay Cole, a professor of forensic psychology at a small liberal arts college in the Northeast. She and her husband, also a professor, have two young boys. They own a house, they can afford child care, they are not at the bottom of the economy. But Lindsay wrote in about rationing. She rations her kids’ snacks, the electricity, and the hot water. She used to give her boys separate baths; now they take them together to conserve the heating oil, which costs $1,300 to fill the tank. She bakes her family’s bread and muffins to save money, but then she started wondering whether running the oven at 450 or 500 degrees actually costs more than buying a $10 loaf at the store. So she pulled up last year’s electric bill and this year’s bill, tracked the kilowatt hours, and now she plans her baking around cooler days so the oven doesn’t fight the air conditioning. “I do,” she told the hosts. “I absolutely do.” She called it a cognitive tax — the mental energy she spends trying to squeeze savings out of every corner of her life, energy that is no longer going into her job, her kids, or the larger economy.
The K-shaped economy in practice
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:22) **The Everything-All-At-Once Economy** - The hosts introduce a listener check-in, revealing a split economy where boom times and bleak times coexist.
- 2 (02:31) **Meet Leo: The Inflation Generation** - 17-year-old Leo Vamaka, a high school senior with two jobs, has only known a high-inflation economy since he started working at 13.
- 3 (05:22) **Listener Check-In: The K-Shaped Reality** - The hosts pivot to listener emails, noting a mix of people doing well and many more who are struggling and changing their habits.
- 4 (07:32) **The Summer Pay Cut and the Ghost Van** - Lindsay details a specific financial setback that pushed her family into crisis mode.
- 5 (09:04) **The Cognitive Tax of Cost-Cutting** - Lindsay describes the mental gymnastics required to make ends meet, a burden that hurts her productivity and well-being.
- 6 (14:02) **The Silver Lining and the Guilty Winners** - Lindsay acknowledges a paradox: her retirement accounts are doing great, but that doesn’t help her today.
- 7 (16:20) **Rick: The Guilty Retiree** - Retired listener Rick Schultz represents the top of the K-shaped economy, but feels deep guilt about his luck.
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Show Notes
One one hand, the stock market is on a prolonged, upward trajectory. Unemployment is low and inflation has come down from its peak. But on the other hand, inflation is frustratingly sticky and higher than we want, job turnover is extremely low making looking for work an endless grind, and more than 75% of Americans say they’re stressed about money.
So we asked you – our listeners – how is the economy working for you? We got a range of responses. Some people are going to great lengths to save money and make ends meet, others are thriving and feel kind of guilty about their good fortune. We also heard from a new generation being shaped by this economic moment into hyper cost-conscious shoppers. You might call them the inflation generation. Each story helps us understand what’s actually going on in the economy and what the stats aren’t capturing.
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This episode of Planet Money was produced by Emma Peaslee and edited by Alex Goldmark. Reporting help from Charlotte Isidore. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Robert Rodriguez. Special thanks to all our listeners and all of you who wrote in to let us know how you’re doing.
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