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So right now, we are approaching the highest gas prices in American history. I'm putting that number at $5.79 a gallon, the all-time record Washington State hit on May 20 of this year, which totally makes sense with everything that has been going on. I'm not counting Washington state, California and Hawaii. Those states are outside normal for the rest of the continental United States. They're just different kinds of states. But that high gas price is a picture of where gas prices could go for the rest of the country. We will use that number as cautionary tale for the average person in America who makes under $100,000 a year.
What Americans don't realize, in real numbers: Food prices are not just up. Grocery prices are up about 25% since 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Food at Home index. That's before this year's diesel spike has fully worked its way to the shelf.
Here's the part I don't want you to miss. You cannot control the price of gas, diesel, or groceries. But you can control how much money comes into your house. The entire point of this message is that there is a way to make more income, enough to offset these higher prices and eventually eliminate them as a worry, and it costs less to start than one tank of gas a month. I'm going to show you the problem in full, by the numbers, because you need to see it clearly. Then I'm going to show you the way out.
Who I'm Talking To: The Middle Class and Below
The median household income in America is $87,460 right now, which is pretty good. That's a pretty good life in most places you can live, depending on how many children you have, where you live, and your lifestyle. You can make a living with that. And if you really need to, you can cut back your expenses and still make a living.
Let me explain “median,” because people hear it on the news and don't know what it means. Line up every household in America from the lowest income to the highest. The median is the one standing in the exact middle. Half of America is below it, half is above it. It's not an average. The average adds everybody up and divides, and a few billionaires drag that number way up. The average household income in America is north of $120,000, and that describes almost nobody. The median tells you what the typical family actually lives on.
Now, who is the middle class? Pew Research defines it as two-thirds to double the median. Do the math on $87,460 and you get roughly $58,000 to $175,000 a year. Below $58,000 is lower income. Above $175,000 is upper income.
This message is for the middle class and everybody under it. Especially the people making $50,000, $40,000, $30,000 a year, and the people at the poverty level. If you make under $100,000, I'm talking to you. Honestly, if you make under $200,000, you need to hear this too.
We used to just want to live a good life. Make a living, be healthy, be strong physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and financially. That was enough. Somewhere along the way we put superficial things ahead of all of that, ahead of our mental health and definitely ahead of our financial health. We scroll social media and spend to keep up with the Joneses, when we should be investing to keep up with the Buffetts. Then gas and diesel prices jump 30 or 40% in a year, and it's a wake-up call. We have to come back down to Earth and think about survival. So what does survival look like now?
Energy Is the Lifeblood of the Economy
That 30 to 40% is not me exaggerating. The May 2026 Consumer Price Index showed gasoline up 40.5% from a year earlier and overall inflation at 4.2%, the highest since 2023. The national average jumped $1.04 a gallon, about 35%, in the weeks after the Iran war began, the largest monthly increase in the gas price index since the government started tracking it in 1967.
Then you talk about diesel. Diesel is the highest it has ever been. Diesel is running well above $6 a gallon nationally, and in Washington State it hit $7.42. The producer price of diesel was up 105.9% over the prior year as of May.
Gas and diesel are the lifeblood of our economy. Business, consumer, personal. When energy prices go up, everything is affected, and everything goes up. Diesel is the fuel that moves every piece of food from the farm to the factory to your grocery store. Purdue's agricultural economists call it a pipeline, and they say that pipeline is loading at record rates. There's a three-to-six-month lag before you see it at the checkout. Those months are now.
So now people have to make some decisions. They have to face budgetary issues in their home, in their business, in their family. It changes the things you can do and how much money you're going to spend. On the surface, you're just trying to make sure you have enough money to do everything you need to do. But when you really start thinking about all the changes that are going to happen in the economy because of high gas and diesel prices, it's like, wow. The price of everything is going to go up eventually.
That means planning. Not spending as much. Not going on that trip. Not buying that extra pair of shoes. Not hiring that extra employee.
And people feel it. The latest Conference Board consumer confidence report came in at 81.9, the lowest since 2014. Think about that. Lower than the pandemic in 2020, when the financial status of many people was pretty bad. Lower than the inflation and energy spike right after it. When the Conference Board asked people why, the write-in answers were the high cost of goods and services, and oil prices.
I remember going to the grocery store and having anxiety in the checkout line. And you could feel it. It wasn't just me.
The Good News, and Why It's Being Gripped
Here's the thing. The economy was doing well, and in many ways is doing well. Median income rose 2.6% last year and the poverty rate dropped to a record low of 10.2% in 2025. That is great news. It's not just the stock market that's doing great.
But that good news is being gripped by high energy prices going into the winter months, when people are trying to keep their houses warm, and going into harvest time as well. There were already all these issues in our economy that keep people from saving money, from investing in stocks, from investing in their future, from going out and having a good time with their family.
Some people want to be financially stable before they get married or have a family. Some have decided, “Because I'm not financially stable, I'm not going to have a family. I'm not going to get married.” Or maybe they're already married and they're saying, “I'm not going to have another kid, because we're not stable enough to have the lifestyle we really want.”
My Honest Take: This Is Not a One-Year Problem
What I really want to share is this. I want people to think about the future. If it's hard right now to make a living, what do you think is going to happen if energy prices stay high or go higher?
Economists will tell you energy is the heart of your economy. Low gasoline and diesel prices mean the economy runs better. The price of your goods and your food is lower, because it costs a business less to get those goods from the factory or the farm to the store. The consumer has more money too, because they're not spending it on gas, on heating the house in the winter, on air conditioning in the summer. They can spend it on their needs, their lifestyle, their savings, and their long-term financial strategy.
And my honest take is that the long-term drivers of high energy prices are persistent, and they are not optimistic. The Russia-Ukraine war, the Iran conflict, the Strait of Hormuz, and a shortage of refineries all point to diesel staying expensive for a long time. When you stack high energy prices on top of high interest rates, it chokes the economy. It chokes the ability of the economy to run smoothly and to grow.
The Hidden Hit Nobody Is Thinking About: Business Owners
One hidden factor people won't think about until it happens is that these energy prices are going to hit the business. The consumer is buying less, and the prices the business has to pay are higher. And the business owner is a person too. They have to do certain things in their own life. So when that business owner gets hit by all these higher prices, they think to themselves, “Well, I've got to raise my prices, because I've got to make more money myself.”
It might hurt their hiring. They might get very suspicious about hiring new people. And then they might have to let people go, because of the economic forecast they foresee and how they feel. Sometimes it's about how you feel, and that's true for the consumer and the business owner.
If You Make Under $100,000, This Is for You
So this is the problem for people like myself who make under $100,000 a year. You may not have the skills that are so desired by the market that you're the one the business keeps when the first people are let go. Your job might be replaced by artificial intelligence or robotics.
Right now is the time to start creating a new income flow. Right now is the time to start a new way of making money that is in addition to what you're already doing, and hopefully can replace it. Because the fact of the matter is, the economy is changing. Inflation and the national debt are forcing it. Government austerity policies will mean less money being pushed out by the government, because the government has to cut back its spending because of the debt, the interest rates, and inflation.
So now we're talking about less money flowing around the economy to businesses. That hurts the people who depend on their jobs just to make ends meet. The job that used to give you 40 hours a week might only give you 35. The charity that used to do things in your community may not be able to do what it used to do. The government assistance that helped people buy food, pay rent, or buy clothing may not be there anymore. That includes Social Security and Medicare. There may be cuts to those programs right down the road.
When the Government Can't Help
Maybe these things never happen. Maybe something changes in our economy, or in our world, because the geopolitical issues and the wars are causing a lot of this in the first place. But even without the wars, our national debt has ballooned, and it has caused a reckoning in our government and our economy. It's causing havoc, panic, and conversation about what we're going to do as a nation.
But the people who need to be asking these questions the most are not asking them.
People who make under $100,000. People who make under $80,000. People under the median income in America. They aren't having these conversations. They don't even know these things are going on. They notice the gas prices, but they can still survive the gas prices at this moment, because the gas prices have not traveled through the economy yet. They haven't hit the places that make the food prices go up and the monthly energy bills go up.
So what happens when the government can't give you assistance with healthcare? When the government isn't helping Grandma or Grandpa? When it isn't helping your daughter, your granddaughter, your grandson, or your son? What happens when the family has to come together and put more money in the pot to help people in the family? Or are people going to be homeless? Are people going to miss meals?
This is a conversation people under six figures are not having. The people making over six figures, chances are they have assets. They have homes. They have cars they can sell. They have stocks, bonds, businesses, real estate. They have skills. They have a community of people they work with and talk to, so they can make moves, and they have flexibility. Chances are they have better representation. If there's a bill going to the House or the Senate, they can talk to somebody. “Oh yeah, I know that person. I know the company he works for. I know this group and that group.”
Look, I'm not the one looking down on you. I know a lot of great people, a lot of very skillful, awesome people who don't make six figures. I'm just painting a picture of the economy, by the stats, exactly as it is.
Leaves Off a Tree
There's a big population in our economy that, when a shock hits, it's like shaking the leaves off a tree. When the wind blows really hard, the weaker branches and the weaker leaves fall first. It's natural.
So I want to prepare people for a possibility, and I would say a probability, that the economy is going to get worse. It's going to be tougher to make a living in America. I want you, right now, to think differently, to do something different than what you've been doing, and create your own online business.
Why I Say “Online Business” Every Time
Let me show you why I go straight to online business and skip the brick-and-mortar conversation.
You don't need $800 or $900 a month for a building. You don't need $50,000 saved up just for your rent, especially the first year. They used to say don't plan on making any money the first year, just have the money for all of your expenses. So let's run that:
- Office rent at $1,000 a month: $12,000 a year
- Two or three employees: another $40,000 to $50,000
- Goods and services to run the office: another $40,000 to $50,000
- Your own salary: are you even going to pay yourself?
Now you're talking about maybe $100,000 just to get started, and you have no clientele. You don't know if your business plan is going to work. You may have kinks to work out. It may take you one, two, or three years to catch traction, and you haven't made any money. Actually, you might be losing money.
As I record this blog on my phone, I'm standing in front of some very promising businesses that opened and then shut down.
Now the online business:
- Web hosting: $50 to $60 a month
- Cell phone: you already have one, so I don't even count it
- Internet: you already have it, so I don't count that either
- A small budget for a couple of things a month, depending on your niche: optional, and only once you're making money
Call it $35 to $100 a month on the low end. Anything extra you buy while you're building it is a luxury. You don't have to do it. If you want extra money for it, work some extra hours or pick up a little gig work. The whole point is this: very low entry, very low monthly obligation, but high reward.
And social media is free. It's free advertising. All you have to do is create content, which many people are already doing on their social media anyway. It's free to post on your website. Once you start making content on your site and your social media, the search engines do the rest, and you get free traffic coming to your website just by creating great content. If you want to put some extra money on it and run pay-per-click, by all means, do that too. Get people coming to your great content and your great offers, build your clientele, build your business, build your community.
Start Your Learning Curve Tonight
I want you to start your learning curve right now. Because every time I turn around, I see the gas price story. Right now, in my hometown, it's $4.28. I'm out for a walk tonight and I just passed it. I can't remember when a gas price was this high here. I looked it up: the highest we ever had in Norfolk was $4.65, back in 2022. I was in Raleigh at the time, and it was about the same there. We are 37 cents from the all-time high in my city, and the national average is already above $4.
If you take one thing from this, take this: get ready to tighten your belt, start making more money, and start investing. Right now. Not when the food prices catch up to the diesel prices. Now.
A Call to Action
There are many ways to create an online business. My top recommendation is the one I use myself: try Wealthy Affiliate free for 7 days. Unrivaled mentorship, resources, and AI tools, all for $50 to $100 a month after the trial. That's less than one extra fill-up a week at today's prices, and it's the entire cost of starting a business that can grow with you instead of a job that can let you go.
Make something happen.
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