Before we dive in, just know, it’s not just you.
I’ve looked through my Pepco bill, internet bill and even my water bill over the past couple of months, and they’ve all risen. And when I say risen, I mean enough that it was impossible to ignore (every dollar counts, y’all), so here I come to the internet to talk to you about it. I even pulled up last year’s statements just to confirm I was reading the numbers correctly.
I started asking around just to sanity-check myself (but are we really living in sane times right now?). I talked to friends, colleagues, family members across different states and income levels, and the response was pretty much the same: Yes, everything is more expensive right now. Not in some abstract economic sense, but in the very concrete reality of monthly bills that keep climbing while paychecks stay relatively flat.
Now I know we all hear reports about economic recovery, declining inflation, and improving job numbers. Of course, because I’ve reported on it. And yet here we are, watching our utility costs climb while that part of the story gets barely a mention, particularly as it relates to any communication from the current administration.
So, what’s driving this? Utility companies say they’re investing in strengthening and modernizing the grid, and the industry is in the middle of what analysts call a capital expenditure “super-cycle,” with projections to spend roughly $1.4 trillion between 2025 and 2030. And guess who ends up covering those costs? Us.
Look, infrastructure does need investment. But the timing feels particularly brutal given everything that has happened to us this year. Not to mention, we’re heading into the holidays, which is already a season marked by increased spending pressure, and now the baseline cost of keeping our homes running has jumped substantially.
There’s also the data center boom that rarely makes it into conversations about residential utility costs (those giant warehouses full of servers that power AI, streaming, cloud storage, all of it.). The explosion of artificial intelligence and cloud computing means massive new facilities consuming unprecedented amounts of electricity. Those costs don’t just disappear, and instead ripple through the entire power grid, ultimately landing on residential bills. So yes, you’re also bearing the financial brunt that AI is costing to all of us.
For Black households, this economic squeeze also comes at a higher cost to us. Research shows that even when you control for income, Black families spend a higher percentage of their earnings on energy costs. In fact, Black households spend 5% or more of their income on utilities compared to the 3% national average. In some cases, families are spending over 10% of their income just to keep the lights on and the heat running.
The legacy of redlining means many Black families live in older housing stock with poor insulation and outdated systems. Renters, who make up a larger share of Black households, face a particular bind. They can’t make energy-efficient upgrades even when they want to, because they don’t own the property. Meanwhile, landlords who don’t pay the utility bills have little incentive to invest in improvements that would lower those costs.
My grandmother used to layer sweaters in her own home during winter, trying to keep heating costs manageable. Decades later, that same calculation is playing out in households across the country. People are making decisions about comfort and safety based on utility costs that seem to rise without any real check.
Like honestly, who budgeted for higher utility bills on top of holiday travel and gifts this year? Most of us are already budgeting for gifts, travel, and hosting, and now we have to add utility bills that have increased by hundreds of dollars over the course of the year. C’mon now. The holiday shopping data tells us that higher-income households are spending freely, but for everyone else, purchasing power is essentially flat when adjusted for inflation. We’re spending more money to buy less, all while trying to maintain traditions and family expectations around the holidays.
I keep coming back to the choices people are making. More than 12 million households keep their homes uncomfortably cold or hot specifically to control energy costs. Millions more have had to skip food or medicine to pay utility bills. These aren’t numbers from some far-off era. This is happening right now, in communities we know, among people we care about.
You can decide not to take a vacation or skip restaurants for a while. But you can’t opt out of heating your home or powering your refrigerator. These are non-negotiable expenses that keep climbing, eating into budgets already strained by years of inflation in groceries, gas, and housing.
Energy analysts expect utility costs to continue rising as infrastructure projects span years and data center demand grows. For Black households already carrying a disproportionate burden, the wealth gap means less financial cushion to absorb these increases. The housing gap means fewer opportunities to make efficiency improvements. AND ON TOP OF THAT, the income gap means every dollar spent on utilities is a dollar that can’t go toward building generational wealth.
I don’t have solutions to offer here. I’m not an economist or a policy expert. But I am someone watching this play out in real time, feeling the strain in my own household and hearing it echoed in conversations everywhere. There’s something deeply wrong when the cost of basic utilities becomes a significant household stressor, when families have to strategize around keeping warm, when the economics of simply existing in your own home become untenable.
So no, it’s not just you. Every bill really did go up this month. And unless something changes structurally about how we handle utility costs and infrastructure investment, next month they’ll likely do it again.