For anyone interested in the facts of what goes into the cpi-u (or -w) basket rather than opinion, here is a breakdown of the weights going into the basket of g

For anyone interested in the facts of what goes into the cpi-u (or -w) basket rather than opinion, here is a breakdown of the weights going into the basket of goods and services. The date is a bit stale, from 2015-2016, but good nonetheless. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2017.txt https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2017.txt https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/home.htm#Archived%20Relative%20Importance%20Data https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/home.htm#... notably, top-level breakdowns are: Food and beverages 14.359 Housing 41.772 Apparel 3.018 Recreation 5.737 Transportation 16.537 Medical care 8.673 Education and communication 6.707 Other goods and services 3.198 Interestingly, if you dig into the data, you can see some interesting patterns of consumer spending. For example, women's and girl's apparel spending is 66% larger than men's and boy's apparel! Also, motor vehicle maintenance and repair is only weighted as 1.123% of spending, which is a lot less than I would have guessed given people's horror stories. Breaking down the housing category, the combined values of rent and owner's equivalent of rent make up more than 30% of the basket. This has risen by about 5% (of the whole basket) since 1987. I doubt that that category is being evaluated too low in a substantial way. Rent by itself is only 7.8% of the basket, which may mean that the basket is fairly insensitive to people being gouged by their landlords. If you live in a fancy metro, your rent will be above average compared to the nation. This is to be expected. I am surprised that medical is only 8-9%. This has risen from 5.8% in 1987. I expect that the reason it is so low is that the average person spends 80% of their life having tiny medical bills and 20% of their life having huge ones. By looking at which categories have shrunk in their weightings over time, you can get a feel for what goods/services are cheaper now than in the past OR that people now choose substitute goods instead of. Certain categories have no substitute, i.e. medical. If you squint at the data real hard you can eke out where you personally are getting reamed more than past-you would have. Some actionable advice would be to consider which services have gotten more expensive due to Baumol's Cost Disease (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease) and do your best to DIY them.