Many Americans believe they are making responsible financial decisions by cutting everyday expenses, but the data suggest a more complicated reality.
Across multiple surveys, households are increasingly reducing spending not just on discretionary items, but on essentials tied to health, stability, and long-term financial security.
What appears to be a short-term adjustment is often a shift that weakens financial resilience over time, particularly when preventive care, savings contributions, and basic needs are affected.
Rather than simply reflecting tighter budgeting, these patterns point to deeper pressure on household finances that is reshaping how people prioritize spending. The result is a growing mismatch between immediate coping strategies and longer-term financial well-being.
92% of workers have cut spending on essentials, and the damage is compounding
A national survey of 1,011 employed adults conducted on December 7, 2025, found that an overwhelming majority of American workers reduced their spending during the year, with 40% trimming grocery purchases and 21% delaying healthcare visits or prescriptions, according to Resume Now’s 2026 Cost-of-Living Crunch Report.
Only 12% of workers said their wages had kept pace with inflation, and just 17% reported being able to comfortably cover essentials while also saving for the future. The cuts went far beyond dining out and vacations, which 69% and 55% of respondents reduced, respectively.
“America is in a cost-of-living crisis, and workers know it. Wages simply aren’t keeping pace. People are cutting groceries, skipping healthcare, delaying major life decisions, and turning to outside help at record rates. These are survival strategies, not spending choices,” said Keith Spencer, Career Expert at Resume Now.
Nearly half of workers (49%) dipped into their savings just to get by, while 24% took on new debt and 22% borrowed from friends or family, the report indicated. These are not discretionary adjustments; they represent the erosion of financial safety nets that take years to rebuild.
Healthcare expenses are forcing 82 million Americans into daily trade-offs
The spending pressure is especially acute for medical costs, which function as a hidden tax on household budgets at every income level. A much larger study from the West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America surveyed nearly 20,000 adults between June and August 2025.
The survey found that roughly one-third of respondents had made at least one trade-off with daily living expenses to afford healthcare, a figure equivalent to more than 82 million people, Gallup reported.
Among uninsured Americans, 62% said they had made at least one sacrifice to pay for care, including 32% who borrowed money and 24% who stretched their prescription doses, the survey found.
Even among insured adults, nearly three in 10 reported making similar sacrifices, underscoring that coverage alone does not guarantee care remains affordable. Income offers only partial protection from these pressures.
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More than half of adults in households earning less than $24,000 annually reported making trade-offs, but so did 25% of those earning between $90,000 and $120,000 and 11% of those earning $240,000 or more, the Gallup data showed.
“When families across every income level are forced to choose between medical bills and paying their heating or electric bill, that’s not a personal budgeting problem; it’s a systems failure,” Tim Lash, president of the West Health Policy Center, noted in a statement accompanying the findings.
Delayed retirements and postponed home purchases reveal the full toll of medical costs
The damage from these trade-offs extends well beyond monthly bills and into the major milestones that define adult life. Another West Health-Gallup survey of 5,660 adults, conducted between October and December 2025, revealed that healthcare costs are reshaping major life decisions for millions of Americans across every demographic.
Nearly one in 10 respondents, representing an estimated 24 million people, said they had postponed retirement because of medical expenses, the survey found. Roughly 18% reported delaying a job change, 14% put off buying a home, and 6% postponed growing their family because healthcare consumed too much of their budget.
“The data offer measurable insight into how Americans are experiencing cost pressures within the healthcare system and how those experiences are influencing their broader financial decisions,” Joe Daly, global managing partner at Gallup, explained in the report.
Short-term survival strategies are creating long-term risks
The pattern emerging from these surveys is unmistakable: Americans are treating essential spending as discretionary, and the consequences ripple for years.
Reducing grocery quality or skipping preventive care often leads to more serious and more expensive health problems later, Keith Spencer of Resume Now warned in a January 2026 interview with ConsumerAffairs.
“Reducing the quality of your diet or skipping preventive care can lead to more serious health issues down the road, which in turn can result in higher medical costs and greater stress,” Spencer said. “These pressures compound, creating a cycle where short-term survival strategies may worsen long-term financial and health outcomes.”
The retirement math illustrates this vicious cycle with painful clarity for Americans approaching their later working years. A 65-year-old retiring in 2025 can expect to spend approximately $172,500 on healthcare expenses during retirement, excluding long-term care costs, Fidelity’s 2025 Retiree Health Care Cost Estimate found.
Shrinking safety nets leave 60% of households exposed to a single financial shock
The erosion of emergency savings may be the most alarming signal buried in the data from these surveys. Resume Now’s survey found that 60% of workers could cover expenses for three months or fewer if they lost their job, with 24% unable to last even a single month on their current reserves.
At the same time, 46% of respondents said they rely on more outside help now than they did a year ago, including family support, government aid, and additional debt, the report found. Only 13% said they rely on less outside assistance than the prior year, a lopsided ratio that signals households are moving in the wrong direction.
Ellyn Maese, senior researcher at Gallup and research director for the West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare, said the strain extends well into the middle class, noting that even middle- and upper-middle-class Americans are making difficult decisions such as reducing utility use, driving less, and borrowing money to cover medical expenses, CNN reported.
Healthcare affordability has become a full-blown economic crisis
Overall, the findings show a clear shift in how households are managing financial pressure, with essential spending increasingly caught in the trade-off between immediate needs and longer-term stability.
What begins as a short-term adjustment often feeds into wider strain on savings, health outcomes, and major life decisions, creating effects that extend far beyond monthly budgets.
At the same time, the data highlights how widespread these pressures have become, affecting people across income levels and life stages rather than a single group.
The result is a pattern where financial choices are increasingly shaped by necessity rather than preference, with ripple effects across work, health, and retirement planning.
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