I have household Quicken records going back many years. I retired (rural Western US) at the end of 2017.

2018 and 2025 are good years to do a side-by-side: no wayward chicks returning home to wait out the pandemic, same household size, no egregious Obamacare + knee replacement years (we're both now on Medicare)

Some items e.g. travel expenses don't lend themselves to YOY expenses. But, here are those that do:

2025 vs 2018
Groceries 69% increase
Utilities 44% increase
Auto (1) 33% decrease
Household (2) 36% increase
Property taxes 6% increase
Medical (3) 32% increase
Entertainment (4) 27% increase

CPI inflation 28% increase


Notes:
(1) Moved one of the daily drivers to an EV in 2024. Fuel costs dropped dramatically, as did maintenance
(2) "Household" is a wide-ranging category, covering everything from a new Kindle cover, to Costco/Amazon purchases, to appliance repair/replace, to landscaping, plumber, and pet expenses/vet bills. For our own use, they're broken down with much more granularity in Quicken; for this comparison, it's the same household with the same baseline lifestyle needs in 2018 and 2025.
(3) as above, medical varied the most dramatically YOY in retirement. But these were two pretty uneventful years. The amounts include everything out-of-pocket: premiums, deductibles, copays, dentist, glasses...
(4) again, pretty broad-ranging: books, cell phones, subscriptions (video, publications, satellite radio, audiobooks), more books

The utility bill reflects whole-house solar switched on September 2025. This includes "fuel" for the EV going from ~$40/mo to zero (excepting road trips; highway supercharger electricity rates approximate ~$5/gal premium gas)

One-time expenses (new-to-us car, enormous oak limb taking out the front porch) not included

The biggest take-home for me is the grocery spike; I hadn't quantitated it before. For entertainment purposes, I went back and looked at Jan-Sept 2018 grocery expenses vs Jan-Sept 2026: 85% increase, 3x the increase in the CPI.

-- sutton