Marketplace - It's not just you — food prices rose 2.4% last year

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

The cost of food consumed at home was up 0.7% month-over-month in December, and 2.4% year-over-year. Go back five years, and grocery prices are up 25%. And like so many things in this economy, the rising cost hurts the poorest Americans most. Also in this episode: Americans carry credit card debt longer than they used to, two ultra-low-cost U.S. airlines make plans to merge, and we get an update from Kansas grain farmers.Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

Chew on this bold question from Dentine gum. Is it ever okay to compliment a millennial on their skinny jeans? In 2026? Dentine, chew bold. When it comes to inflation, there are things we can give up when prices get too high, but food is non-negotiable. From American public media, this is Marketplace. From Colorado Public Radio in Denver, I'm Amy Scott in for Kai Rizdahl.

It's Tuesday, January 13th. Good to have you with us. The overall inflation news today from the Consumer Price Index wasn't too bad. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said headline prices increased 3 tenths percent in December from the month before, 2.7% on an annual basis, same rate as in November. One stubborn outlier, though, was food. The cost of food consumed at home, aka groceries, was up 7 tenths percent for the month. And if you go back five years, it's up about 25 percent. Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes takes a look at how people are getting by. At Patterson Food Market, a small corner store in Baltimore, Courtney Johnson is shopping for a snack.

Let me get some hot sauce and just bro, two of them. What kind? Any kind of, any kind of. I mean, do you know what kind of? These are jerky, dried sausages. Johnson also gets a 16-ounce soda. Another customer, Eric Smith, buys a soda, too. It's $2. And outside the store, Smith says that's too much.

I mean, a year ago, the same soda that it just paid for was $150 in the same store. How does it make you feel? Robbed. Smith says he doesn't blame the store owner, but it makes him think there's something wrong with the overall system. Cornell Agricultural economist Chris Barrett says, rising food prices make shoppers feel powerless. Most of us bristle a little bit when we feel our agency is really limited and there's nothing we can do about it. Food prices are rising for lots of reasons, including climate change, a weaker dollar, and tariffs.

And Barrett points out the increases hit low-income people hardest because food takes up a bigger chunk of their household budgets. Food prices really don't affect the behaviors of the well-off. Food prices affect the behavior of people who are struggling to make ends meet. And we see a lot of trade-offs for cheap calories. Barrett says we're all paying attention to where we get our nutrients and how much they cost. In Baltimore, Eric Smith says he's trying to eat smaller portions. Also, he says his mindset toward eating has changed. He says he used to eat for fun. Now he feels like he eats to survive. In Baltimore, I'm Stephanie Hughes from Marketplace. Well, one way people are managing the higher cost of living is debt. Overall, All, credit card debt is up more than 5% from a year ago, according to the latest data from the New York Federal Reserve.

And a new survey from bank rates suggests Americans are carrying credit card debt longer than they used to. More than 60% of people with credit card debt say they've carried a balance for more than a year. That's up from 53% in 2024. Marketplace's Daniel Ackerman looked into it. Overall, wages are growing faster than inflation, but that's not the case for everyone, says Steve Blitz. Blitz, Chief U.S. economist at T.S. Lombard. You know, so people don't get any wage increases at all in the course of a given year. Blitz says stagnant wages plus persistent inflation are a bad combination.

When you're in that kind of a world, it becomes very difficult to grow out of a debt problem. So those credit card balances just keep rolling over. And Chip Lupo, an analyst at Wallet Hub, says, There are consequences that do come with that. it's going to make it harder for you to apply for additional credit. Think a mortgage or car loan. And Lupo says long-term debt impacts more than just finances. One in five consumers say that they're very stressed about the credit card debt,

which debt reflects the mental strain of carrying balances month after month. One factor that could be drawing out that debt is timing. Households may have delayed some credit card payments during the holiday season, says Ben Gutten and Kenny, an assistant professor of finance at Rice University. People spend a lot in the run-up to Christmas, buying gifts for their family and friends, and also going on holidays and trips. But credit card debt could come down in the new year. The Fed's interest rates have been elevated in recent years.

That's meant consumers have higher interest on their credit card. But he says if the Fed remains worried about the job market, there could be further rate cuts to come. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace. On Wall Street, traders seemed a little worried. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. Back in September, I took a road trip across Kansas, learning what farmers are up against amidst a changing climate and changing policies. With Congress expected to take up work on a new farm bill this year, after years of delays, we thought we'd check back in with Vance and Louise Emke of Emkey seed in Healy, Kansas.

Good to talk with you again. Right to meet me here. Glad to be here, Amy. When we met, it was, I guess, early fall, maybe late summer. How did the year turn out for you? Well, actually, pretty good. We had some great apprehension about things because of the very low grain prices that we got out here. Break even price to cover all costs on dry land, Western Kansas wheat is 7.20 a bushel,

and right now we're sitting at 4.30. However, we had career-high yields of wheat, corn, and milo, and that basically saved our bacon because we had very high yields. That combined with low price, it mitigated the low price, and so we came out looking pretty good. And we had such a great crop locally, I mean, within our region and our county, there's no place to store some of that. So it's sitting on a ground in a million bushel piles. China usually buys most of it or all of it, and it's just sitting here, and China has not shown up.

Yeah, and that's because of the trade war that's been going on. When we last talked, China basically wasn't buying soybeans, Milo or grain sorghum. But I thought they had resumed those purchases. Is that not shown up yet in your market? No, they are buying some soybeans and small amounts of, grain sort of them. But we'll just have to wait and see. As we get into January and February here, that's historically when our South American competition soybeans come on the market, like down in Brazil and Argentina. And we'll just have to wait and see whether the Chinese

follow through on their commitments. So last month, the Trump administration announced $12 billion in aid for farmers who have been dealing with these trade disruptions and the higher cost due to tariffs. What do you make of that program? Well, it's definitely needed. Farmers would definitely prefer to be getting their income out of the marketplace rather than with these emergency payments from the federal government. But in 2021, 4% of Kansas farmers had negative farm incomes. and in 2024, that number had jumped up to right at 30%.

The data aren't in yet for 25, but I'm really, really concerned about what we're looking at for 26. It just isn't looking good. Well, what's your outlook for the year ahead? Well, and looking in the 2006, I'd say it's going to be more of the same and a lot of it. looks pretty grim to me. You know, you cannot count on having a Grand Slam home run two years in a row. So, you know, it's going to be pretty bloody out there. And the rest of the story is that the things that we purchased like our steel and undercutter blades, those prices went up. The one thing that didn't go up or has gone down is fuel. That is true.

But that's a small part of what farming is. I mean, we have machinery costs. We have replacement costs. Well, that's a good point, Louise, and it's a very uncomfortable situation that we're in. Well, as you know, the Congress is quite a few years behind now on reauthorizing the Farm Bill. It's just been getting annual extensions. Do you expect federal policy to make any progress this year? Good question. What we'd like to know? I don't know.

It's pretty iffy. I wouldn't expect any change at all in terms of foreign policy. We're just at a stalemate here, and there's a lot of people who are really suffering because of it. What's life like on the farm this time of year? Pretty slow in January? Well, for us, go ahead. Yeah, we wake up every morning about 5 o'clock and start worrying. You know, yeah. Worrying can be a full-time job.

January is kind of a relief because you're trying to get. get through year-end and make a balance sheet that looks, you know, helping. But we're doing a lot of planning. We have lots of H-2A workers in the neighboring county, and we're looking at it too, because we just don't have enough labor in the spring. So that's, you know, we're working on that as a winter issue. Yeah, on a more fundamental basis, we do have a winter storm that's supposed to be coming in. I need to get Louise out there on the south porch and chop up a whole bunch more wood so we can keep warm during the snowstorm. Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah.

All right, Vance and Louise Mke, grow wheat and sell grain seeds to other farmers out in Healy, Kansas. Thank you so much for your time. Sure, thank you. Two of the country's lower-cost airlines are planning to merge. Las Vegas-based Allegiant travel has offered to buy Sun Country Airlines, headquartered in the Twin Cities, for about $1.5 billion. Both airlines are small and both are profitable,

unlike other budget domestic carriers, which have been struggling recently. Marketplace's Samantha Fields has more. These two airlines are made for each other. At least if you ask Charles Duncan of investment firm Altitude X Aviation Group. They're both very nimble, very flexible, very focused on low cost and leisure-oriented.

And unlike other budget airlines, namely Frontier and Spirit, they're both doing well financially. One reason for that. Particularly in Allegiance case, they like to fly in markets where they have no nonstop competition. Frontier and Spirit, meanwhile, fly more heavily trafficked routes. And Megna Maharishi at the Travel News website Skift says they've been facing greater competition on those routes.

We have seen airlines expand their basic economy offerings in recent years. And basic economy has proven to be pretty profitable as well for, the United's Americans and Delta's. Plus, she says what travelers want has shifted in the last few years in a way that also benefits legacy airlines. More and more consumers are opting for more premium products. They want to fly business class or they want to fly first class. Delta reported strong revenue today, much of it from premium.

But Henry Hardavilt at Atmospheric Research Group says plenty of people are still looking for cheap tickets. I think the one thing about Sun Country and Elegent combining is that, because these two airlines do not compete directly on almost all of their routes, this could actually be a great way to expand the reach of much-needed low-fair competition. If the two merge and grow, he says it could give travelers more options. I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace. Coming up. 99% of the time they are Chinese counterfeits.

Counterfeit stamps. But first, let's do the numbers. Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 398 points, 8 tenths percent, to close at 49,191. The NASDAQ lost 24 points, 110 percent to finish at 23,709. And the S&P 500 dipped 13 points, two-tenths percent to end at 6963. Sam Fields was just talking about airlines. Atlanta-based Delta airlines fell off by two and four-tenths percent, Allegiant Traff. travel, parent company of the Legion Air, slid three and three tenths percent.

Sun Country declined two and two tenths. You're listening to Marketplace. This Marketplace podcast is supported by Intuit QuickBooks. In a new year, momentum matters. For small business leaders, every smart decision comes down to cash flow, which determines where you stand today and how you move forward tomorrow. With Intuit QuickBooks's powerful money management solutions, gain the clarity and control to turn cash flow into confident growth.

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This is Marketplace. I'm Amy Scott. New home sales picked up in the fall, according to delayed data out today from the Census Bureau, which is still catching up from that government shutdown. Sales in October were up more than 18% from the same time last year. And if recent trends hold up, many of those new homes, homes may be smaller than in the past. The median size of a newly built single family home has been shrinking. And as Michael Corrin wrote about recently in the Washington Post's climate coach column, that may be a good thing. Michael, welcome to the program. Happy to be here. Thank you. What got you started on this topic of square footage as it relates to happiness? Well, my friend Jay, actually, she was in New York City and had raised her family in a sub-600 square foot apartments, and she loved it. And she hoarse said there were trade-offs, but I was intrigued by this idea of how she could raise a family in such a small space and

feel like this was the best idea she's ever had. I live in one, too, and so maybe this is a bit selfish. Well, what did you learn about whether bigger houses lead to happier lives? It's not the house, and that might not be a surprise, but it's kind of the opposite of the American dream, which is the assumption that if we had a bigger house, we would just be happier. We have more freedom. And in fact, for most people, it's the opposite. What there is, though, however, is something called the inverted U hypothesis. So the number of people in your house, the peak happiness, is four to six. Too few, just by yourself or too many, can be stressful. Around the world, the data was pretty consistent. However, the size of the house itself was not. There really

wasn't much effect at all, what relationship at all between the size of the house and one's happiness. So if you look at how the American house has evolved over time, what it's, it's like doubled in size since the 1970s, and yet households have gotten smaller. So why are we doing this? That's right. We've gone from about, I think, around 1,600 square feet in the 70s to almost 2,500 a day. You know, there's a lot of reasons that drive this. There's certainly zoning that has favored larger houses, builders make more money in larger houses. and there's sort of this idea that we need bigger homes, even when our families are smaller. And it's interesting. You talk about how it kind of depends on how we use the space.

I was really struck by a figure about up to 60 percent of homes sit largely unused, which is really no surprise when you drive by these big houses and you wonder, who lives there? And what are they doing with all those rooms? That's right. In fact, just three rooms, they get almost all the attention, which is the dining room, the kitchen, and the family room. and you can have a 1,200 square foot home. And if it's really designed around those places where you gather and you make social connections, that's going to mean a lot more for your happiness than having a game room

or another garage or something like that. And the real problem is not that a big house makes you unhappy, although that can happen. It's really what we give up in pursuit of it. So when you're overstressed, when you're commuting long distances, and you have to spend more money to maintain this, you actually undermine the things that do. do make you happy, which is how do I relate to my kids? How much time do I have? Do I know my neighbors? Can I walk places? And ultimately, there are big homes that in many cases actually reduce our happiness overall. Yeah, so I want to explore what's happening now because, you know, for many decades,

home size was increasing. But in recent years, it's actually started to shrink again. And is that all about affordability? It's easy to assume that based on what's happening with prices and mortgage rates. It's a great question. I don't know if we fully understand all the factors there, but you're absolutely right. Affordability has become a major issue. And the old sort of ladder where people could buy a starter home for cheap and then move their way up has really, if not disappeared, become extremely difficult. And so I think there is a change in both people's preferences, what they can afford. And there's a big push around the country to increase the number of smaller homes so that people can buy into the real estate market. So another thing you wrote about which struck me was that it's not so much how big our own house is that affects our happiness, but how big our house is in comparison to our neighbors. Can you talk about that McMansion effect and how it contributes to satisfaction? Sure, yeah, this was one of the biggest surprises for me as well. I did know that people value things relative to others more than just this absolute value. For example, people will want a smaller home so long as bigger than others. But I was shocked at how much it actually affects our happiness.

And I did talk to someone who had done research on this. And he basically said that larger homes don't increase our well-being. Really what matters most is how close the size of one's own house is to the largest houses of the neighborhood. And the effect is so strong that it actually wipes out most of the happiness people gain from going into larger homes. Did reporting on this change how you think about your own living situation? Well, I live in a 968 some square feet apartment or a condo in San Francisco. And I love where we live. And my wife and I, of course, we have two toddlers and a dog.

And so we've thought about this. And this convinced me, yeah, this convinced me two things. One is I probably am not going to leave. I think I love where we are. And I think we would be giving up so much if we did. And I may just spend the money and get an extra bathroom in our current place. Yeah, someone needs to do the research on number of bathrooms and happiness. Based on the comments, I think there's a pretty high correlation.

So we may stay put and just add the extra bathroom. All right. Michael Corrin wrote about whether smaller houses can lead to happier lives in the Washington Post. Thanks so much for your time. Great to be here. Thank you. When was the last time you sent a letter in the actual mail? Okay, a lot of us still do holiday.

cards, but the U.S. Postal Service says overall mail volume continues to decline year after year. The shift to digital correspondence is, of course, the main reason. But another issue is cost. The price of first-class stamps has risen 42 percent since 2020. From LAist, reporter Jill RepLogal went looking for ways to send cards on the cheap this year and discovered a growing market for counterfeit stamps. I have a friend who sends out Valentine's. Day cards instead of Christmas or New Year's cards, because who has time for all that before the end of year holidays? I thought maybe I'd copy this great idea, but the price has me reconsidering. We're talking at least 100 bucks for custom cards with family photos, plus 78 cents per stamp,

a price that just went up again in July. I mentioned this on a recent phone call to my dad. His response? They get 100 stamps for $29. He gets these online. My dad is a seasoned bargain hunter, but 29 cents a stamp compared to the postal service price of 78 cents? How is this possible? I did some sleuthing and came across this guy who had an immediate answer to my question about my dad's 29-cent stamps. 99% of the time they are Chinese counterfeits. This is Wayne Youngblood. He's a lifelong stamp collector and... I've been a professional stamp journalist for nearly 40 years. Youngblood writes for Lynn's Stamp News and other trade publications and lectures about stamps and postal history.

He served on the board of the American Philatelic Society for 12 years. That's a nonprofit organization for stamp collectors. Youngblood says there's been an explosion in recent years in websites selling counterfeit stamps, mostly produced in China and India. The counterfeiters even copy the special new design. the Postal Service puts out each year and fast. Flag stamps, commemorative stamps, you name it, has been counterfeited. It takes them about six weeks to turn around from the time a stamp is issued until it's available in the United States as a counterfeit.

Why not just shut them down? For one thing, counterfeit stamps are not easy to detect, even for the Postal Service. It's very difficult to tell unless we're analyzing these stamps side by side in our lab with a very technical equipment. Marjan Barigan, Houston is an agent with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. That's the law enforcement wing of the postal system. Cracking down on the sellers of fake stamps has become a game of whackamol, she says. We are doing our best to shut these websites down, but there are millions of them that just keep popping up. The agency tries to catch counterfeits as they come into the country. Agents seized more than 4.4 million fake stamps in the first quarter of

this fiscal year, according to Berrigan-Huston. But that may be just a drop in the bucket. The stamp journalist Youngblood estimates the Postal Service is losing more than a billion dollars annually on counterfeit stamps, which is part of the reason the price of stamps keeps going up. Berrigan-Hustead wouldn't confirm that estimate, but she acknowledged it's hitting USPS hard. We still have to make up that revenue, so it's because of the problem that the cost has risen. It was time to lay this all out for my dad, the online stamp buyer, and also the most upstanding guy I know.

I didn't want to get him in trouble, especially on a national radio program. It turns out the Postal Inspection Service is mostly focused on punishing the suppliers of counterfeit stamps, not on winning consumers. So, Dad, what if I told you those stamps are probably counterfeit? Nothing has been returned. You do risk having your mail confiscated and opened if you use fake stamps, but it's unclear how often that actually happens. Yeah, but they're probably still counterfeit. Okay. All right. I won't buy any more.

I should add, you can buy legit stamps online, and even at a slight discount, from a few select vendors like stamps.com and through big box, stores like Costco. But if the discount is more than a few cents per stamp, chances are they're not real. In Huntington Beach, California, I'm Jill Rep Logel for Marketplace. This final note on the way out today, central bankers around the world are standing up for Fed Chair Jerome Powell and for Fed Independence in the face of that criminal investigation announced this week. More than a dozen leader signed a statement of support saying, quote,

Chair Powell has served with integrity, focused on his mandate, and an unwavering commitment to the public interest. Thanks today to Sarah and Waylon, Andy Hess, and Matt Hancock here at Colorado Public Radio. Jordan Manjee, Zoniel Maharaj, Janet Wynn, Olga Oxman, and Virginia K. Smith are the digital team. And I'm Amy Scott. Hope to see you back here tomorrow.

This is APN. Hey, it's David Brancaccio, a host of the Marketplace Morning Report. It has been one year since the costliest set of wildfires in California history, U.S. history, and by at least one calculation, the history of the world, 16,000 structures were destroyed, most of them homes. I can quote your figures about insured versus uninsured losses measured in billions. But as people in the fire zones face year two, we go from macro to micro. I'm checking in with the neighbors on one street in Altadena, where 15 homes were destroyed on a single block. These are my own neighbors. I lost a home on that street, too.

Join us for on-the-ground reporting as we hear from people still dealing with insurance, getting permits, finding contractors. One guy had to go through 30 contractors to find one with the right skills he could afford. Plus, for most, rebuilding is taking years. How do people find the money to live elsewhere? Listen to the Marketplace Morning Report using your favorite podcast app.