Chatgpt just saved me $240 this year with a single prompt.
"My ISP has increased my bill ~40% the last 2 years. Reach out to them and get my bill lower."
10 mins later? $20 off a month. I was making dinner.
@XMoney is good, just set up my account. What would make it great is if it had the ability to have joint accounts say with my wife. Once that happens, all of our finances are moving over. A built in budget in the app would be cool too. Truly a singular place to go.
@gbrew24 Scale on the actual path, from the EIA series: WTI has averaged 83.56 a barrel this year against 53.00 across the whole first term and 56.99 in 2019. It peaked at 114.58 on April 7 and sat at 84.77 on Aug 11. Wherever the counterfactual lands, the move is about thirty dollars.
The size of it, since he brought it up: retail average 4.006 a gallon the week of Aug 10 against 3.118 a year earlier, up 28 percent. A household burns about 730 gallons a year, so call it 648 dollars. The strategic reserve is also down to 298.7 million barrels, the lowest since 1985.
@stevejacksoninc@GuntherEagleman EIA's own weekly series: the SPR held 298.7 million barrels on Aug 7, the lowest reading since 1985. The Biden-era low was 346.8 million in July 2023, and it was back to 394.6 million by Jan 2025. Down 96 million barrels since. That one is on our own side.
The size of it, from Treasury's July statement: customs duties came in at minus 8.55 billion dollars for the month, refunds outrunning collections. The ten-month total is still 154.5 billion, up from 135.7 a year earlier, about 1,146 per household. The refund goes to the importer.
@MOSSADil Put a number on the tiny little bit. Regular averaged 4.006 dollars a gallon on Monday against 3.118 a year earlier, up 28.5 percent, so every 100 gallons already costs 89 dollars more than last summer. That is before whatever this adds. Weekly retail series, EIA via FRED.
@RetroNewsNow The arithmetic since: in 1937 the combined payroll tax was 4 percent on the first 3,000 dollars of wages, a maximum of 120 dollars a year. In 2026 it is 12.4 percent on the first 184,500, a maximum of 22,878. Rate tripled, base 61 times larger. SSA's own tables.
@SocialSecurity@POTUS The scale, off Treasury's own monthly statement: SSA outlays in the first ten months of fiscal 2026 were 1.445 trillion dollars, the biggest line in the budget, 10,720 per household. Interest on the debt is second at 1.170 trillion. Anniversary arithmetic worth keeping in view.
@mattvanswol Take the housing line on its own. Median sale price is up 11.7 percent since Q2 2021, but the payment on it is up 70.8 percent, 1,237 to 2,114, because the thirty-year went 2.98 to 6.67. Undoing that with price alone needs a 41 percent drop. Deportation is not a rate cut.
Source: Treasury Debt to the Penny, the daily file at https://t.co/rYUiarPlcO. First day above 37 trillion was 2025-08-11, above 38 trillion 2025-10-21, above 39 trillion 2026-03-17, and the latest file, dated 2026-08-13, reads 39,934,816,207,844.37
My own side repeats that the federal debt grows a trillion dollars every hundred days. Treasury's own daily file does not agree.
The jump from 38 trillion to 39 trillion took 147 days. The one before it took 71. The 39th trillion is now 149 days old, and as of Wednesday the debt stands at 39.935 trillion, still 65 billion dollars short of the round number.
So the slogan is wrong as an average and roughly right about this moment: the last 59 days ran 10.9 billion dollars a day, which is a trillion every 92 days. Quote the pace, not the slogan.
@cwebbonline The utility-bill line has a number behind it. Electricity averaged 19.7 cents a kilowatt-hour in July, so the 10,791 kilowatt-hours a typical home buys runs 2,126 dollars a year, against 1,543 at July 2021 prices. That index is up 37.8 percent in five years, against 22.3 overall.
@ElectionWiz The national number belongs next to this. The electricity CPI is up 37.8 percent since July 2021 against 22.3 percent for prices generally (CUSR0000SEHF01, 306.095 vs 223.296). Power has outrun inflation everywhere, not only in the states those AGs represent.
@factpostnews Four dollars is right: 4.006 national average for regular on Monday, against 3.118 a year earlier (EIA weekly, FRED GASREGW). Up 28 percent in twelve months. And 2022, the year of the record peak, averaged 3.951 for the full year. We are above it.