What do we mean when we say “affordability”? 

Is it inflation, a way to translate CPI numbers into kitchen-table economics, from the price of eggs to the hammer of a hospital visit? Is it wages, which may be rising (unequally) but are still falling behind the cost of living? Is it the sticker shock of a house or a college education—things that have historically served as on-ramps to long-term wealth-building? Is it broken markets for things like utilities or health insurance or childcare?

Back in January, The New York Times polled voters about their feelings on the affordability of a range of goods and services. The majority felt that a middle-class life was out of reach and pointed to the cost of things like buying a home, paying for healthcare or childcare, earning a degree, or saving for retirement as evidence.

In June, the Times published an op-ed by former Federal Reserve Vice Chair Lael Brainard and former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Rohit Chopra presenting additional survey data showing that the cost of food—that most basic of necessities—has become a leading source of financial strain for middle-class families. 

These pressures aren’t just today’s financial headaches. They’re the core factors shaping which households will enjoy financial security and opportunity—and which ones won’t—in the years ahead.

The “middle class” is a slippery thing to pin down. Its meaning has changed over time and means different things to different people. Income alone can’t capture its emotional, social, and political force. What the phrase really encompasses, I think, is the suite of things that we collectively agree should furnish a good life—the kind of life we want to live and feel we ought to be able to live.

Affordability is the word we now reach for to name what it costs to live that life, however you may define it. Affordability is both the cost of getting ahead, and it is the cost of getting by. It’s the mortgage, and it’s the rent. It’s the student debt payment, and it’s the cost of groceries. 

All of these things are drifting further out of reach, but their retreat is uneven in a way that is increasingly dividing us. The wealthiest 10% of households hold roughly 87% of the total value of corporate equities and mutual fund shares, and spending by the highest-earning households is outpacing that of lower-income households at a growing rate. By one popular estimate, the top 10% of earners account for almost half of all consumer spending. Is it any wonder consumer sentiment is at historic lows?

The etymology of “to afford” predates modern money as we know it. In early English, it meant “to accomplish or carry out”. Only between the 14th and 16th centuries, during the transition from European feudalism to global capitalism, did it acquire the sense of bearing a cost or having enough to buy something. But the two meanings never fully separated. To afford something is still, at its root, to be able to achieve it.

So, when we ask whether a family can afford groceries, a middle-class life, or the “American Dream,” we’re really asking about their capability to meet basic needs—both today and tomorrow—while still feeling control over a future they cannot see.

That capability has a name: financial health.

For nearly a decade, the Financial Health Network has taken the temperature of household financial health in the U.S. through the annual Financial Health Pulse®. This initiative tracks whether and how families can spend, save, borrow, plan, and protect their finances in ways that let them meet their needs, absorb shocks, and pursue opportunity over time. Our approach is deliberately holistic, looking past income or credit scores alone to see how financial lives hold together—and how changes in financial health outcomes relate to material hardships, disparities across place and population, and long-term security and prosperity. 

If affordability is the price of entry to live a good life, then financial health stamps the ticket.

As I’ve thought about the growing national conversation about affordability, I’ve found myself returning to a modest, throwaway artifact: the receipt. The receipt records two things: what you paid, and what you got for it. Affordability, then, is the growing gap between them, driven both by a higher price and by a deterioration in what that money buys—fewer ounces in the bag, thinner insurance coverage, the app that now charges for a version that does half of what it used to do for free.

To understand this affordability crisis and how households are navigating the financial health challenges it presents, we need the receipts. In their Times op-ed, Brainard and Chopra write that the country needs leaders willing to “demand rigorous, reliable data on some basic questions.” Our headline macroeconomic indicators, however, were not built to answer those questions. GDP, unemployment, CPI, and even the poverty rate describe the economy in the aggregate, not whether a given household can carry its costs and get ahead. 

As the Financial Health Network’s founder and CEO Jennifer Tescher and former Acting CFPB Deputy Director David Silberman wrote a half-decade ago, we need data that is more proximate, more directly connected to the day-to-day financial lives of ordinary Americans.

We’re seeing new measures designed to fill the gap. Gene Ludwig’s True Living Cost—a cost-of-living metric that includes a fuller basket of housing, food, care, and transportation than the traditional inflation measures—has climbed about 1.5 times faster than the CPI since 2001. The Urban Institute’s “true cost of economic security” estimates that nearly half of all people live in households that lack the resources needed to survive and thrive.

At the Financial Health Network, our research is squarely focused on the microeconomic realities of household finances, giving financial institutions, policymakers, and other stakeholders the nuanced insights they need to strengthen every facet of financial health—from savings and spending to insurance coverage, credit access, and more. 

In this year’s Financial Health Pulse U.S. Trends Report, made possible by the Principal Foundation and out next month, we analyze households’ perceptions of what they can and cannot afford for the first time. The answers to these questions, alongside our year-over-year measurement of financial health, satisfaction, and stress, are extremely revealing. What we see is a country under real pressure and uneasy about what comes next. 

As our financial lives grow increasingly complex and uncertain, understanding changes in financial health in real time becomes even more critical. In the coming months, the Financial Health Network is investing in a more robust research program designed to reveal how a shifting job market, rising living costs, and countless other forces are shaping household financial health. The Financial Health Pulse will anchor a new intelligence engine built to answer the questions that matter most: how households are doing, what is driving those outcomes, what does it take to improve them, and how we can sustain and scale transformation. Business, policy, and community leaders will be able to act on these shifts as they happen to help shape the future of financial health, instead of merely reacting to them.

To illuminate the people behind these data points, we are also committed to telling stories through our Human Stories collection that elevate the experiences of households all over the country as they navigate daily financial life. Our latest story follows Ashley, a single mom who lives outside of Seattle and earns a good salary but still struggles to afford basics like food, childcare, and school supplies.

Affordability represents not just the gap between a paycheck and a grocery bill. It also represents the distance between where you stand today and the life you once expected to be able to build for yourself. We need to be honest with ourselves about where we really are if we want to bridge that distance.

Watch for the Financial Health Pulse U.S. Trends Report out in September, and join us in shaping what comes next.