In a recent video, real estate and finance commentator Michael Bordenaro tried to take a break from the usual economic doom spiral and do something a little more familiar, a little more personal, and honestly a little more effective. Instead of talking in abstract terms about inflation, he walked through the ordinary things people used to buy without much thought and showed how many of them have drifted into the territory of small luxuries.
That is what makes his argument hit. He is not talking about yachts, private schools, or penthouse apartments. He is talking about food delivery, coffee, chips, concert tickets, bottled water, printer ink, flowers, car insurance, and a dozen other things that once felt routine. The kind of purchases that used to be annoying, maybe, but not financially loaded. Now, in Bordenaro’s telling, they are loaded.
His larger point is not just that prices rose. Everyone knows prices rose. His point is that pay has not kept up in a way that makes the average person feel remotely comfortable, and because of that, a huge share of normal life now feels overpriced, nickel-and-dimed, and strangely exhausting.
That is probably the best way to describe the current mood around money. People are not just upset because things cost more. They are upset because even the smallest conveniences now come with a feeling that someone is reaching into their pocket one more time.
The Cheap Little Extras That Stopped Being Cheap
Bordenaro begins where a lot of modern overspending begins: convenience.
Food delivery used to mean maybe five bucks in fees back in 2019. Now, as he describes it, it can mean fifteen or twenty dollars in extra charges before you even factor in the tip. That is for one meal, often one pretty average meal, and he makes the obvious but still necessary point that a few app deliveries a week can quietly drain money that could have covered real groceries.
Then there is coffee, one of the most normalized budget leaks in modern life. Bordenaro says the old three- or four-dollar coffee was already a ripoff, but now six, seven, or even nine dollars for a drive-thru drink is treated like normal behavior. It is one of those things that sounds minor until it becomes a habit, and then suddenly a person is spending hundreds a month just to stay caffeinated in public.
He puts chips in the same category, and he is right to do it. Snack foods have become one of the clearest examples of shrinkflation. What was once a roughly three-dollar bag is now six or seven dollars, often for less product. It is hard to think of a cleaner symbol of the modern grocery problem than paying double for a smaller bag of air and potato dust.
The same goes for soda at restaurants, which Bordenaro says used to cost about two dollars and now can cost five, sometimes without free refills. At that point, a fountain soda starts to feel less like a throw-in and more like a financial insult. He notes that in some places a happy-hour beer can cost less than a soda, which tells you how upside down some of this has become.
Even bottled water, maybe the most basic impulse purchase in American life, has ballooned from a one- or two-dollar item into something that can now run three, four, or even five dollars depending on where you buy it. None of these purchases sounds catastrophic on its own, but that is exactly how this works. They are not supposed to wreck you one at a time. They are supposed to bleed you slowly.
The Subscription Economy Never Stops Billing
One of Bordenaro’s strongest sections is the part about the bills that do not even feel like purchases anymore because they arrive automatically.
Subscriptions have become one of the clearest examples of how modern spending hides in plain sight. A few years ago, a person might have paid twenty dollars a month total for a handful of digital services. Now, he argues, it is easy to hit one hundred, two hundred, or even three hundred dollars a month once all the streaming, storage, music, premium tiers, and ad-free upgrades are piled together. None of the individual charges looks fatal, which is exactly why so many people miss how big the monthly total has become.
The same trap appears with in-app purchases, which Bordenaro describes as another quiet money pit. Free apps are often not really free, and “premium features” have become a business model built around irritation. He points out that some people are spending a hundred dollars or more a month inside apps that barely function without extra payments. That sounds absurd until you remember how carefully these systems are designed to turn small irritation into recurring spending.
Even old-fashioned office basics have not escaped. Printer ink, one of the least glamorous purchases imaginable, has gone from expensive to ridiculous. Bordenaro says what might have cost forty dollars in 2019 can now cost eighty or more. It is a perfect example of the modern consumer experience: something dull, practical, and impossible to romanticize somehow becoming outrageously priced anyway.
He says the same about hair products, which used to be around ten dollars and now can run twenty or more for tiny containers, often paired with exaggerated promises and slick packaging. Whether it is regrowth solutions, styling treatments, or premium grooming products, the pattern is always the same: smaller product, bigger price, louder marketing.
Fun Costs More, Looking Put Together Costs More, And Family Life Costs Way More
Some of Bordenaro’s examples are not essential at all, but that does not make them unimportant. In fact, they matter because they show how much of ordinary enjoyment has become harder to justify.
Take concert tickets. What might have been a seventy-five-dollar outing for a decent seat is now, in his telling, more like two hundred dollars or more for seats so far away you might as well watch the clips later online. That same inflation of experience shows up in Disney trips, which were already expensive at roughly four thousand dollars for a family several years ago and can now run seven to ten thousand dollars or more. At that level, a family vacation stops feeling like a splurge and starts feeling like a financial event.
Then there are drinks at the bar, especially cocktails. Bordenaro says ten dollars used to be the rough price and now twenty to twenty-five dollars is not unusual. He frames that as one of the clearest examples of the way everyday social life has crept toward luxury pricing. If even two glasses of wine or a couple cocktails now rival the price of an entrée, people are not imagining things when they say going out feels less spontaneous than it used to.
He is equally blunt about weddings, which have gone from already-painful averages of about twenty-five thousand dollars to fifty thousand or more. His view is clear: this is one of the biggest money pits in modern life, and the wedding industry has figured out how to monetize emotion in a way few industries ever have.
The same inflation hits appearance and personal maintenance. Manicures, he says, used to be around forty dollars and now can hit seventy, eighty, or even one hundred depending on where you go. Hair coloring has followed a similar path, moving from roughly eighty to one hundred twenty dollars into the one-hundred-fifty-to-three-hundred-dollar range. Add in those flowers people still buy for birthdays, condolences, and anniversaries, arrangements that he says went from around fifty dollars to more like one hundred fifty, and you start to see the broader pattern. Looking nice, celebrating, dating, gifting, and participating in normal social rituals all cost more than many people can comfortably absorb.
And then there is family life.
Bordenaro says having kids now costs vastly more than it did just a few years ago, with daycare alone often running fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred dollars a month. That is before food, clothes, activities, or any of the other ordinary costs of raising children. There is nothing glamorous about that number. It is just heavy.
Big Ticket Life Got Bigger And Meaner
The most serious part of the video comes when Bordenaro shifts from smaller consumer irritations to the costs that really shape a household’s future.
Cars are the obvious starting point. He says the average new car that cost around thirty-six thousand dollars in 2019 is now closer to fifty thousand. The result is what everyone already sees on the road and in the debt data: longer loans, bigger monthly payments, more underwater trade-ins, and more people realizing too late that they financed a vehicle they never truly could afford.
That cost does not stop with the car itself. Auto insurance, which was already around one hundred dollars a month on average in his telling, is now closer to two hundred or more. That one hurts in a special way because it is not discretionary in most places. You cannot simply opt out and “cut back.”
The same logic applies to health insurance, which Bordenaro says has climbed from roughly four to five hundred dollars a month to six, seven, or eight hundred dollars or more, often for worse coverage. It is one of the clearest examples of paying more and feeling less protected, which is maybe the most frustrating form of inflation there is.
Then there are the devices and goods people replace every few years whether they want to or not. Smartphones that once averaged about seven hundred dollars can now run twelve hundred to fifteen hundred depending on storage and model. Clothes, he says, went from something you could pick up for twenty or thirty dollars to something that now easily costs fifty to a hundred just to leave a store with a couple basics.
Even fast food, the old fallback for people who did not want to spend much, no longer deserves its old name. A meal that once felt cheap can now run twelve to fifteen dollars. Red meat has taken the same path, with basic ground beef jumping from three or four dollars a pound to seven or eight or more. That kind of increase changes how people shop, how they cook, and in some cases what they eat at all.
And finally, there are the things Bordenaro almost shrugs at but still includes because they matter to real budgets: tobacco products, which he says have gone from six or seven dollars a pack to ten to fourteen. He notes that nobody really needs them, and he is not wrong, but the increase still fits the broader picture. Even bad habits have become premium priced.
The Real Point Is Not About Luxury, But About What “Normal” Means Now
The smartest thing in Bordenaro’s video is that he does not pretend every example carries the same weight.
Nobody needs flowers. Nobody needs Disney. Nobody needs salon color or concert tickets or app upgrades. But that is not the point. The point is that these things used to live in the category of ordinary optional life, the little extras and everyday routines that made people feel like they were doing okay. Now many of them live in the category of “probably not worth it.”
That psychological change matters more than politicians and economists like to admit.
When food delivery, coffee, chips, restaurant soda, bottled water, subscriptions, in-app purchases, printer ink, hair products, concert tickets, Disney trips, bar drinks, weddings, manicures, flowers, cars, auto insurance, health insurance, smartphones, clothes, fast food, red meat, hair coloring, child care, and tobacco all feel more expensive at the same time, people start to feel as if life itself has become a negotiation.
That is really what Bordenaro is describing. Not just inflation, but erosion. The erosion of the sense that an ordinary paycheck can support an ordinary life without every purchase feeling like a decision tree.
His conclusion is straightforward. The real issue is not merely that prices jumped. It is that incomes have not grown in a way that makes these increases feel manageable. If wages had truly kept pace, people would grumble, but they would move on. Instead, they feel stuck comparing what normal cost in 2019 to what it costs now and realizing that “normal” has turned into something much more expensive than it has any right to be.
That may be why this kind of video resonates. It does not rely on spreadsheets or slogans. It relies on recognition. Most people do not need to be convinced that everyday life costs more. They feel it every time they fill a cart, pay a bill, tap an app, or look at a menu.
And once enough “little things” stop being little, the whole budget starts to feel upside down.
Ed spent his childhood in the backwoods of Maine, where harsh winters taught him the value of survival skills. With a background in bushcraft and off-grid living, Ed has honed his expertise in fire-making, hunting, and wild foraging. He writes from personal experience, sharing practical tips and hands-on techniques to thrive in any outdoor environment. Whether it’s primitive camping or full-scale survival, Ed’s advice is grounded in real-life challenges.
