Why Do the Economic Numbers Feel So Small?
A household
accounting of what really matters
By
Mónica Pérez Nevárez | August 2026 PlanetWise Newsletter
I have been going through my things lately, deciding what
has value and what I can let go of. A camera I have not used in years. Books I
loved once and will not read again. Furniture too big for the small living room
I have now. Every item a question: does this still serve the life I am living
now, or is it a relic from a life I am no longer living in? That is the
accounting I am actually doing this month, and it has very little to do with
the accounting splashed in the news.
The latest national reports say the American economy grew at
an annual rate of 1.5 percent during the second quarter, while
inflation-adjusted consumer spending increased at an annual rate of 3.2
percent. Consumer prices were 3.5 percent higher than a year earlier. Food was
up 3 percent, electricity 4 percent, gasoline 26.7 percent and energy overall
15.7 percent. The numbers are official. I do not think they are invented. But
lately, economic numbers feel too small beside what I encounter in the produce
aisle.
Perhaps that is because I live in Puerto Rico, where
economic growth has felt suspended in the same uncomfortable limbo for most of
the past two decades. Perhaps it is because averages tend to flatten the
experience of particular people in particular places. A national inflation rate
cannot tell me why foods I remember buying for ten dollars now cost fifteen. It
cannot distinguish between an increase in the electric rate and a mini-split
working overtime to keep one room medically tolerable during a heat wave. It
does not know that my electric bill has moved from roughly $150 to $200 a
month, or that gasoline I once bought for seventy-five cents a liter now costs
around $1.10.
The numbers may be accurate. But they have been averaged
until they mean nothing to my daily life.
I feel economic change at the checkout counter long before
any news report averages it out. I see it as smaller meals, postponed errands,
a higher electric bill, buying less gas at the pump, and the quiet removal of
things that no longer fit within this month's budget. It changes what I cook,
when I cook, and whether cooking a full meal is even sensible. During this
heat, I make snacks into meals, eat one beautifully seasoned vegetable, or buy
a deli sandwich, because adding more heat to the house would have just created
another problem. And it is the same instinct that has me going room to room
deciding what I still need, what someone else might want to buy, and what
simply needs to go. The heat has done what nostalgia couldn't; I am not being
sentimental about any of it anymore. My yard sale is not a eulogy for my past.
It is an inventory for my possible futures.
I know perfectly well that I am not following a graceful
plan. I am improvising, adapting and being careful with every bit of time and
money while still getting what I need. My goal is very clear: get through this
rough patch, and if it turns into a longer situation, fit my life to the new
conditions. Some days that means feeding myself simply. Some days it means
photographing and pricing my possessions for a virtual yard sale. Either way,
it is economic activity in its most honest form. I assess what remains, decide
what has value, buy and use things carefully, and try to waste as little as
possible.
This heat has also taught me that cool air is sometimes a
medical necessity, because heat triggers my asthma. I conserve electricity in
the morning by opening the windows for cross-ventilation, and I close myself
into my air-conditioned room when the midday heat becomes unbearable.
Distinguishing between the actions I can reconsider and the ones that keep me
alive is where my resilience begins. It is the same kind of sorting I am doing
with my belongings this month. I am learning to distinguish between the things
I can live without and the things I cannot.
That sorting is changing how I think about simplicity, too.
Making “less” into “enough” is not about romanticizing deprivation, nor is it
about enduring a situation that better planning could have prevented. It means
removing unnecessary difficulty so my limited money, time, strength and
attention go toward what actually matters. A simple meal can still nourish me.
A small appliance can cook a meal without heating the entire kitchen. A
clothesline can replace the dryer for my weekly wash, just as it did for two
years during Covid, when I had no washer or dryer. That was adapting and
learning something I still use.
I ask the same question of my house that I have been asking
of my closets: what needs to keep working, no matter what happens? One cool
room. One working refrigerator. Water storage. Light. Communications. I keep a
propane camp stove, repurposed from the years I used to go camping, that lets
me cook without depending on the grid. I have a cooler that keeps medications
safe and keeps face and neck cloths cold. I have handheld fans and a spray
bottle of water. I have some skills that let me earn a little money, legs that
let me reach my neighbors on foot, and enough standing in the community to help
organize a mutual aid brigade if one is needed. I protect the essentials first
and build whatever else I need in stages, the same way I am letting go of my
things in stages.
Those are the beginnings of an Energy List. What I still
need to build toward is a larger household battery for the refrigerator, some
solar capacity, a cistern and a way to filter water, and a pantry built around
canned foods I actually eat. The list also includes knowledge of which part of
the house stays coolest and which gets hottest, when to use which appliance,
how to break a hard task into manageable pieces, and which neighbor has which
tool or skill so I am not duplicating what already exists two doors down. None
of this gives me certainty. It gives me some peace of mind, and it probably
spares me some of the worst consequences of the next heat wave, prolonged
outage or interruption in the things I normally depend upon.
This household accounting is also changing how I look at the
things I buy. The price tag has never contained the whole cost of getting
something to my supermarket. Cheap food may depend on exhausted soil, badly
paid labor, long transportation routes and refrigeration from one end of the
chain to the other. Convenient electricity may depend on a grid I cannot rely
on and fuel whose price I cannot control. A low price can conceal damage done
to some forgotten stream and every town downstream from it. A high price can
conceal fragility. What matters is not what something costs today, but what I
will need, every day after that, to remain fed and healthy.
Perhaps the economic numbers are not too small after all.
Perhaps they were never designed to describe a life this closely. They can show
broad movements in a national economy. They cannot tell me what to keep, what
to sell, what to protect or how to get through August. So I choose to begin
somewhere else: with the economy as I find it in my house, one room and one
shelf at a time.
I
am looking at what should remain. I am deciding what has to be protected. And I
am adapting as fast as I can, one clean drawer, one energy bill, one breath of
cooler air at a time.
