How we get the numbers.

The official CPI-U is a weighted average of a fixed urban basket: Housing, Food, Transport, Medical, and Other. The government speaks that blend as a percent.

The TrueCOLA Project Margin Report publishes the dollars behind it: what living truly costs and what income has left. It prices the same kinds of costs with official source dollars: pay, taxes, housing, health coverage, and the other required living costs. The margin is net income minus required costs. The margin is not an inflation rate and does not replace the CPI.

That dollar figure is the published margin. It is not a leftover in anyone's bank account. It is income, the priced basket, and what is left, for a household type, in a place, in a month.

It is not a government statistic. It is not BLS, Census, SSA, or Zillow speaking. It is TrueCOLA's published reading of those sources in dollars.

It is not a survey of what families actually spent last month. Many households have cheaper old leases, or health insurance through work. This measure asks a different question: what would it cost to buy this basket today, at asking rents and unsubsidized average marketplace premiums.

That choice can make the dollar figure look worse than a lived family budget. That is on purpose. The report is not a personal bank statement.

We do not lobby, endorse, or advocate. We measure, and we publish. It does not tell anyone how to vote, what wages should be, or what Congress should pass.

TrueCOLA structures its analysis across seven demographic income groups. Each group maps to one of two index tracks:

Group A (adult income groups and seniors) uses CPI-U; Group B (Social Security) uses CPI-W, the same index BLS uses to compute COLA.

Each income group uses one index for its weights, its price updating, and its headline rate. Groups drawn from the population BLS assigns to the CPI-U use the CPI-U. Groups whose income federal law adjusts by the CPI-W use the CPI-W. No group mixes the two.

Price updating for essential goods and services relies on official BLS series codes. Each row uses the series matching its assigned index:

Group A rows (CPI-U): CUUR prefix

• Food and Beverages: CUUR0000SAF
• Recreation: CUUR0000SAR
• Education: CUUR0000SAE1
• Apparel: CUUR0000SAA
• Fuels and Utilities: CUUR0000SAH2
• Telephone Services: CUUR0000SEED
• Internet Services: CUUR0000SEEE03

Group B rows (CPI-W): CWUR prefix

• Food and Beverages: CWUR0000SAF
• Recreation: CWUR0000SAR
• Education: CWUR0000SAE1
• Apparel: CWUR0000SAA
• Fuels and Utilities: CWUR0000SAH2
• Telephone Services: CWUR0000SEED
• Internet Services: CWUR0000SEEE03

Income starts with the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2024 vintage (survey years 2020-2024). Yearly figures are divided by 12 to make a monthly paycheck. The tables are not interchangeable:

• One adult and Two adults: ACS table B19301, field B19301_001E (per-capita income).
• Median household: ACS table B19013, field B19013_001E. Already a household figure. Not multiplied by 2.
• Senior 65+: ACS table B19049, field B19049_005E (median household income for householders 65 and over). Already a household figure.

Those Census figures are five-year averages. They move slowly on purpose. We use them for who earns what, not for this month's grocery prices. Do not cite S1901 or B19019 for these rows.

Social Security (one person) uses the Social Security Administration Monthly Statistical Snapshot average retired-worker benefit.

The Senior couple 65+ row uses Census household income for householders 65 and older, scaled to two-or-more-person senior households (ACS 5-year 2024 and PUMS). The Two Social Security row uses the Social Security Administration published aged-couple average benefit. Neither row doubles a one-person figure.

We run that paycheck through tax-year 2026 Internal Revenue Service rules: federal income tax, payroll tax (Social Security and Medicare), and each state's personal income tax schedule. One-adult groups file as single. Two-adult groups file as married filing jointly.

State tax is not one national rate. The engine encodes each state's 2026 brackets or flat rate, standard deduction, and whether the state has no personal income tax (those states are coded as zero). A separate 2026 table records whether each state taxes Social Security benefits. The citation is that encoded schedule set, not a single "state revenue departments" line.

What is left after those taxes is net income: take-home pay. That is the take-home pay used in the margin subtraction.

For renters we use the Zillow Observed Rent Index: the rent a landlord is asking now. No federal agency publishes a monthly asking rent in dollars at this level of detail. Zillow is the only non-federal source in the report. It is named wherever it appears.

Zillow publishes rents by ZIP code. We roll those ZIPs up to each congressional district with official HUD USPS-to-district weights that say how much of each ZIP sits in that district.

For homeowners we use Census ACS 5-year 2024 Selected Monthly Owner Costs (tables B25088 and B25081). That path is shown separately from the renter path.

For working-age adults we use the CMS Marketplace Open Enrollment state-level Public Use File average monthly premium before subsidy, across all plan selections, by state. A two-adult working-age household is priced as two of that state's individual premiums. The published national premium figure ($735.50) is the population-weighted mean of the 50 state premiums, using ACS state population as the weight. It is not the median and not an unweighted average.

For senior and Social Security groups we use the standard Medicare Part B premium from the current Federal Register notice, not a marketplace premium.

This is the price of buying coverage at today's posted rate, not the price a worker pays after an employer share.

Food, utilities, clothes, recreation, education, phone, internet, and other goods start as Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure survey dollars. Matching CPI-U category indexes then bring those dollars to this month's prices. The formula is on this page under "How survey dollars are brought to this month's prices."

Transportation is a separate published couple-model path (IRS Local Standards and ACS commute and vehicle tables). It is not the Consumer Expenditure times CPI-U formula used for the other essentials.

State cost differences on the Consumer Expenditure lines use Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities by State, all-items, 2024. Housing and health insurance stay out of this basket so they are not counted twice.

Each month our data engines download the files from the official agency sites (and from Zillow's public research page). They store the date, the web address, and a digital fingerprint of each file. That fingerprint is a long code that changes if even one byte of the file changes.

The next run is supposed to use this month's files, not last month's files. If a required download fails, the month does not get a passing grade.

TrueCOLA updates baseline Consumer Expenditure dollar figures to current price levels using monthly price escalators. Each household row updates its non-housing expenditure lines using the specific series matching its assigned index: Group A rows update using CPI-U series, while Group B rows update using CPI-W series. The headline inflation comparison for each row likewise cites that row's assigned index.

Group A rows (CPI-U) apply this price-level ratio:

current_monthly = ce_monthly_base × (CPI-U_current / CPI-U_base)

Group B rows (CPI-W) apply the same formula with the CPI-W series:

current_monthly = ce_monthly_base × (CPI-W_current / CPI-W_base)

The _base value is the average of the 12 monthly index values in the Consumer Expenditure source year. The _current value is the latest month, at or before the report month, for which every required series has been released. Each category uses its own series, not the all-items headline. See the index group section above for the full series list by group.

• Food and beverages: CUUR0000SAF
• Recreation: CUUR0000SAR
• Education: CUUR0000SAE1
• Apparel: CUUR0000SAA
• Fuels and utilities: CUUR0000SAH2
• Telephone services: CUUR0000SEED
• Internet services: CUUR0000SEEE03

Other goods and services is published as the nominal Consumer Expenditure value. No CPI-U escalator is adopted for that line. Education uses CUUR0000SAE1, not CUUR0000SAE.

After that price-level step, the engine applies Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities by State, all-items, source year 2024. The same all-items factor is used on the flat Consumer Expenditure lines. These are not five separate category RPP indexes. Districts inherit their state's factor.

state_line = currentized_national × (BEA_RPP_2024 / 100)

BEA_RPP_2024 is the published all-items index, so 100 is the national average. Housing (Zillow rent and Census owner costs) and health premiums are not scaled by this factor.

Two adults, working-age, use twice the ACS B19301 per-person monthly income. That is an explicit size rule, not a hidden extra paycheck invented on top of a household table.

adult2_monthly = 2 × (ACS_B19301_001E / 12)

Median household income (B19013) is already a household figure and is not multiplied by 2. Shared bills are not doubled; food, clothes, and other goods use the IRS National Standards second-person factors listed below.

Where rankings appear, they are produced by the same formula for all 435 districts, never by editorial selection.

Rank 1 is the best place (smallest shortfall or largest surplus). The rank basis is the average of the one-person renter margin and the one-person blended-owner margin. The same rank is shown on the one-person and two-person tables. Ties break by geography order. Every district with a basis is ranked; reliability flags are disclosed beside the rank and do not hide a row.

Every group uses the same subtraction. Only the paycheck, taxes, and (for seniors) the health premium change.

• One adult
• Two adults
• Median household
• Senior 65+
• Senior couple 65+
• Social Security
• Two Social Security

Each group is shown two ways: as a renter, and as a homeowner. The homeowner path is also split into owners with a mortgage and owners who have paid the house off.

Two adults do not pay twice the internet bill or twice the electric bill. Shared costs stay as one household amount.

Working-age Two adults income is twice ACS B19301 per-person income. Shared bills still stay as one household amount.

Food, clothes, and some other goods do go up, but not by two. The engine uses the IRS National Standards factors for a second person: about 1.74 times food, 1.95 times clothes, and 1.78 times other goods. Those are official tax-table factors, not a TrueCOLA guess.

After housing and health insurance are set aside, the published two-adult essentials total is $4,710 a month. The lines below are the published pieces. This page does not add them up again. It only shows what the engine already published.

Some pieces start as national figures (many living-cost lines). Some start as state figures (marketplace premiums, some taxes). Rent starts as ZIP codes and is combined into each district. Census income and owner costs are built on state and district geography when the Census publishes them that way.

The same method is used in every district. A district is not scored with a different recipe than its neighbor.

Each line is rounded to the nearest dollar on its own. The published margin is rounded on its own too, not by adding those already-rounded lines. So if you add the printed lines, you can land a dollar away from the printed total. Think of two careful cashiers ringing up the same cart. Both got it right. Nobody pocketed a dollar, and nobody slipped one in. The monthly report notes this next to the example. Rounding is not the Consumer Expenditure price-level formula named above.

The Monthly Margin Report publishes the next business day after the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the Consumer Price Index. A Friday CPI release means a Monday report. A release on the day before a federal holiday means the report publishes the next business day after the holiday.

CPI release dates come from the official BLS release schedule. This site does not invent those dates.

The next BLS CPI release in that table is Wednesday, October 14, 2026. This report would then publish on Thursday, October 15, 2026.

Our data engines run 515 audit checks. Those checks include the arithmetic, the mapping of each source into the right column, the district ranks, the file fingerprints, and a rule that the workbook still has no live Excel formulas. We pride ourselves on the accuracy of our reports.

The market-rent line is the one non-federal input, the Zillow Observed Rent Index, labeled wherever it appears. Each build pins the newest release available at build time, one month behind the report month.

The basket is a market-price standard: current asking rent and unsubsidized average marketplace premiums. It can run above what a settled household pays, and the methodology states this.

October 2025 data lapse. BLS did not collect October 2025 prices because of the lapse in appropriations. No index value exists for that month. TrueCOLA never uses an October 2025 value. The base-year average covers the twelve months of the spending survey year, which does not include October 2025.

Income vintage. Income for the Census-based rows comes from the American Community Survey 5-year estimates for 2020 to 2024, stated in 2024 dollars. Costs are priced at this month's levels. TrueCOLA does not raise the income figure to the report month. The margin therefore reflects a 2024 income against current prices.

Census ACS inflation adjustment. The Census Bureau adjusts the five survey years to 2024 dollars using national Consumer Price Index factors. TrueCOLA uses the Census figure as published.

Transportation pricing. Transportation is priced from IRS Collection Financial Standards and Census commuting and vehicle tables. It is the one essential line that does not use the Consumer Expenditure Survey and a CPI index.

Regional Price Parities. State cost differences on the essential lines use the Bureau of Economic Analysis all-items Regional Price Parity for 2024. Housing and health premiums are not scaled by it.

Senior healthcare standards. The healthcare line for senior and Social Security rows is the standard Medicare Part B premium. Part D, supplemental coverage, and out-of-pocket costs are not included.

CPI-U

The index BLS publishes for all urban consumers, about 93 percent of the population. Group A rows use it.

CPI-W

The index BLS builds from wage-earner and clerical households, about 29 percent of the population and part of the CPI-U population. Federal law uses it to adjust Social Security. Group B rows use it.