Why Necessities Are No Longer Affordable

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Hello everyone, this is MoneyMom, welcome to the channel. Today, I'm going to chat with you guys about how necessities have become unaffordable >> [snorts] >> and luxuries and unnecessary items have become cheap. I'm going to get right into it. I was doing some research on this and many of you have heard this before, but I actually added a couple to the list. Medical, housing, transportation, education, and these two I added, child care and repairs have become unaffordable for many, many people. I do want to tell you about one Child care, and this is the one I added to the list. I kind of was curious what it cost to put your child in daycare nowadays, and they say the average is that a parent pays for one child a year is $13,000 a year, which is over $1,000 a month. I taught at a daycare in 1988 and I remember how much it cost. It was $100 a week per student, which included the food, which is if you were to look at that, if, you know, it would be about $5,200 a year, okay? Um, for one. I was really surprised. I think actually started out 80 and by the time I left it was 100. But still, that is just crazy.

[00:01:10]Another thing is that's become really unaffordable for a lot of people and I've been talking to people about this is home repairs. And a lot of these contractors are not showing up to do the work or they take the money and they only do part of the job. It's really hard to find good, reliable people. Many people are doing as much as they can for themselves, but not everybody can do that. You know, everybody has different skill sets. Some people may not have the equipment, right? So, why have has this happened? Also, unnecessary things such as, and we the mass produced, I know I told you guys this on another video, in 1980 the average woman had 50 pieces of clothing, in 2026 the average woman has 150 pieces of clothing. So, a lot of these things are produced cheaply, they're mass produced, such as fast fashion, electronics, and there's a you know, it is sold globally, so it's easy to sell it cheaply. But a lot of stuff is not made to last, so you have to keep re-buying it over and over, and so because of that, like when I was growing up you didn't have that, but because of that you end up with all the stuff in the landfills. And so it kind of got me thinking, okay, yeah, what's it's good to have this information, but what are we going to do about it? Cuz it's great to talk about this and you hear people venting about, oh, today's economy.

[00:02:26]Actually, ever since I've been a little girl, people have always complained about something about the economy, right? But what action steps can we actually take? Well, the main thing they're saying is that the reason why essentials cost so much is there's not as much competition, okay? It's kind of like, you know what, they know they have you when you have to have something.

[00:02:46]Kind of like car insurance or homeowners. They know you have to have it, and so they can charge what they want for it. Kind of like electricity or if there's only one internet company.

[00:02:56]They know you have to have internet, so they can charge whatever they want.

[00:03:00]Well, when there's more competition, you know what, then people you you have more of I guess you would say a free market. I thought, wouldn't it be interesting if some of these essentials had more competition and more choices? I think there definitely could be with home repairs and I kind of thought, you know, be nice if more people, if it could be profitable, could start businesses, you know, such as handyman services, you know, child care, things like that. Um, and also education, you can get a lot of education for free, too.

[00:03:31]Finding ways to get things cheaper, you know, my dad actually years ago wanted to maybe open up a apartment complex. He was thinking of investing in one. He didn't end up doing it, but affordable housing, things like that, it would be wonderful. So, what can we actually do about this? Because the average American right now, their bills are about $400 higher than they were even just a few years ago. And if your income hasn't come up to reach that, what can you do?

[00:03:57]One thing is network with other people and learn about all these necessary things. Find out about how you can get a better deal on stuff, okay? That's number one. So, networking with other people. Number two, when you're frugal, and [snorts] we all know this, the biggest thing that many people that are wise with their money do is they spend time researching and learning, okay?

[00:04:21]They will put up with doing a lot of making a lot of phone calls, texting a lot, whatever they need to do to get the information that they need to be able to make better consumer choices. Making more money and cutting unnecessary expenses. And it got me also thinking, if people start cutting all these unnecessary, quote, luxuries, eventually what's going to happen to the price of those? So, I'm kind of wondering what you guys think. Since essentials have become more expensive, what are you doing about it in your budget? What do you think we can do? My biggest tip would be research. Let's look at all the possibilities out there.

[00:04:59]There may be something that we don't know about yet and we could learn about it, it could be something that could help us save money in medical, housing, transportation, education, child care, home repairs. We could maybe save money in these areas if we did more research and we did more networking. Let me know your thoughts on this. That's all I have to say for now. I love you. I appreciate you. And I sure hope you come back for tomorrow morning's video. Bye everybody.