LuAnn Schindler is a Democrat. Her husband, Scott Schindler, is a Republican. While the Clearwater, Nebraska, couple may disagree on some issues, there’s one thing they’ve reached a consensus on this year: Prices are too high.
“It just seems like every single thing is going up in cost and most average, normal citizens in this area cannot afford things,” LuAnn Schindler said. “Something’s got to give.”
The Schindlers are not alone in their frustrations about the cost of living. An October report from the Pew Research Center showed about a quarter of households in the Midwest cannot pay all their monthly bills in full. About 17% reported problems paying their rent or mortgage in the past year.
The couple, who own a share in a family farm and a local newspaper, told The Midwest Newsroom they’re frustrated by the costs of their inputs – supplies and materials for farming and publishing – as well as insurance, property taxes, food and gas.
“It seems like it’s getting worse every day,” LuAnn Schindler, 65, said. “I would really like to find a candidate that just – even if it’s one problem and (they) tackle that one problem – tries to make a difference. Just do what you promise. Don’t talk out of both sides of your mouth.”
An October Associated Press poll shows about 65% of voters blame the Trump administration for cost-of-living woes. Scott Schindler, 57, who voted for Trump in 2024, does not. He said he plans to vote Republican in the midterms, and yet he’s doubtful about a turnaround.
“Well, I’m not very optimistic, to be honest with you,” he said. “But it’s going to have to, because farming anymore is going in the way of big corporations, and the small farmers are just kind of getting squeezed out of everything.”
Catherine Harvey, Omaha-based senior policy program manager for the Urban League, said it’s no wonder voters are frustrated.
“Earnings are just not keeping up,” Harvey said. “And that’s why people feel squeezed and they feel unseen in a lot of cases. GDP is rising. We talk about this AI growth and people aren’t seeing those gains in their own wallets. And that can leave voters feeling disaffected and fed up.”
The Urban Institute follows cost-of-living issues through its American Affordability Tracker. In its latest update, released on Oct. 26, the tracker found:
- Since January 2025, gas prices have risen by 33%, an average increase of $1.02 a gallon nationally, while nominal earnings have grown only 6%.
- Health insurance premiums rose by 22% year over year.
- The costs of childcare and rent have climbed more quickly than earnings over the past decade, leaving families with two young children paying $6,600 more for childcare annually and renters paying $710 more a month for housing than in 2017.
Harvey said that people in other parts of the country may consider the Midwest relatively affordable, but that does not take income into account.
“What people are bringing in is also lower. And doesn't necessarily cover those costs. So for basic and important parts of family budgets, healthcare, childcare, housing, rent, earnings are just not keeping up.”
Between April and September, The Midwest Newsroom interviewed people in four states to ask them about their financial concerns. In October, reporters interviewed registered voters about how the cost of living may factor into their midterm elections decisions.
Food: ‘Robbing Peter to pay Paul’
Overall food prices rose 3% from June 2025 to June 2026, according to data from the USDA. Prices on staples like meat and some fresh vegetables are rising even higher. According to the Urban Institute, one in four working-age adults use credit cards for food and then struggle with repayment. In December 2025, about 16% of U.S. adults reported their household used a food pantry that year, according to the Urban Institute.
John Mabry, the chief relationship officer with the Food Bank of Lincoln in east-central Nebraska, told The Midwest Newsroom in August that he’s seeing an uptick of people using food banks. About 1 in 5 Americans told Pew they used a food bank this year.
“Tough times for young and old right now,” he said.
One of the people who relies on food pantries is Iowa retiree Linda Rufus, 67.
“I’m thinking about how I’m gonna rob Peter to pay Paul because food prices are extremely high,” Rufus said while picking up essential items from the Food Bank of Iowa at an event in July.
She’s changed how she shops for groceries, switching to cheaper forms of protein that won’t strain her wallet.
“I’m a meat eater, so I love steaks. I love lamb chops. I can’t afford those things anymore. Oxtails — I can’t afford those anymore. I basically stick to things like ground turkey as opposed to ground beef,” she said.
Rufus said costs are just one issue she’ll weigh at the polls in the midterms.
“It’ll be based on a few things, not just the food,” she said. “We need someone in office who’s going to make wise decisions that are beneficial to the people, and we really haven’t been getting that.”
Housing: ‘The math wasn’t working’
Midwesterners are not immune to the rising cost of buying or renting a place to live. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the average cost of a house across the 12 states that make up the Midwest has grown from about $330,000 in 2020 to more than $430,000 in the first quarter of 2026.
That’s still cheaper than a house in Portland, Oregon, where Ryan and Brittany Arthur lived between 2020 and mid-2026. After finding they couldn’t afford a house in that city, where the average price is more than $520,000, they moved back to Kansas City, Ryan Arthur’s hometown, in June.
“The market was just unreachable in Portland,” Ryan Arthur, 41, said.
“Especially in combination with childcare costs,” Brittany Arthur, 39, said. “Like the fact that we had two kids at that point, one in preschool and one about to start daycare. The math just didn’t work for those three things to come together.”
While the Arthurs, the parents of two small children, did find an affordable house in a neighborhood they liked, other expenses have surprised them. They said daycare is not that much cheaper than in Portland, and they had to get used to sales tax on groceries and other goods. Oregon does not have sales tax, while Missouri does.
According to RentCafe, rental prices rival mortgage payments in these four Midwestern states as of Sept. 30, 2026:
- Iowa: $1,226 – $1,265 per month
- Kansas: $1,316 – $1,348 per month
- Missouri $1,334 – $1,385 per month
- Nebraska: $1,336 – $1,380 per month
In Omaha, Nebraska, retiree Chuck Martens’ apartment rents for $1,200 a month. The 77-year-old can’t afford that, so he struck a deal with his landlord to do yardwork and other chores around the building in exchange for reduced rent.
Martens, who describes himself as an independent, said he hopes that the Democrats can take control of the House and Senate, but is not sure either party can do much about the cost of living – at least for now.
“Just the transportation cost for goods and services isn't going to go down for a while, and history seems to indicate that when prices go up they usually don’t come down,” Martens said. “I don’t see that changing. And, unfortunately, I don’t see the income side of it rising either.”
Childcare: A 'broken system'
When it comes to childcare, the math does not seem to favor either parents or providers. In the Midwest, annual costs for one child can range from $8,000 to $14,000 a year, according to Child Care Aware of America.
Across the country, Childcare and Development Block Grants provide nearly $9 billion in assistance to families with children younger than 13. States have some flexibility to determine who is eligible for subsidies. The current grant system is using the same formula to calculate subsidies since 2014, meaning it hasn’t accounted for economic change since then.
Experts said the subsidy program can disincentivize providers, leading to fewer available slots for children. Liz Arnold, who runs Like Mine Daycare in Lincoln, Nebraska, takes the subsidies anyway.
“I make more money when I have private-pay clients, but it is important to me that I support my subsidy families because that was the family that I was when my kids were growing up,” Arnold said.
Efforts to update existing funding streams for childcare are pending in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer introduced the Childcare Modernization Act of 2025 last September. In the House, Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson – vying for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat – introduced a similar version. Both bills have bipartisan backing.
Still, Arnold wonders if anything will change.
“Our lawmakers overall don’t see the need for investment in us, and it’s a broken system,” she said. “My families can’t afford to pay me what I need to survive.”
Student loan debt: Losing sleep
Grace Englehart of Blue Springs, Missouri, earned her master’s degree in 2025, and now she owes more than $80,000 in student loans. After about six months of what she considered affordable monthly payments, she got a shock. As of this fall, her monthly payments more than doubled – to nearly $1,000 a month.
“I get paid $1,600 every paycheck, so that’s almost an entire paycheck,” she said. “So there’s no way I can use one entire paycheck to pay for my student loans when they’re due.”
Englehart, 30, and her husband both work full time, but it’s not enough to cover all of their expenses, which include a mortgage. Even before her student loan bill spiked, they were relying on credit cards for food, gas and a variety of other bills.
“I am doing independent contractor work,” she said. “I was tutoring and pet sitting just to help make extra money to pay for gas in my car. To pay for groceries. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in probably a couple of months now.”
Englehart, a Democrat, said any improvement in the cost of living depends on Democrats prevailing in the midterms.
“I think in the long run game, there is only so much this current administration is going to do for us anyway,” she said. “Even if we take back one of the legislatures, whether that’s the House or the Senate, I don’t think we could get anything done unless we were to take over both.”
Intersecting issues
Most of the voters who shared their perspectives with The Midwest Newsroom pointed to a combination of different pain points when it comes to the cost of living. Shawn Tolivar, a Kansas City resident, pointed to groceries, housing and transportation.
“They all intersect,” said Tolivar, 48, who described himself as a leftist. “If you get cheap housing, you’re so far away from everything that you spend the equivalent amount in driving. And then even if you don’t drive, you save money there, but you’re still paying for it in groceries because your groceries have to be trucked in.”
Tolivar, who works as an IT administrator, said he’s not optimistic that either Democrats or Republicans are likely to act decisively.
“I know that Democrats and more left-leaning politicians do better than Republicans across the board in affordability, in general economics,” he said. “My hesitation comes from I don’t think Democrats do enough.”
Melanie Magaña, 57, said she feels fortunate to be weathering inflation relatively well. The Olathe, Kansas, resident is only a few years away from paying off her mortgage.
“I’m proud that I made some really good decisions regarding the money and keeping myself and my kids afloat, and able to save for retirement, ” Magaña said. “I'm not too worried for myself today, but I do really worry about other people.”
As a trainer for a local nonprofit that runs a crisis hotline, Magaña is on the frontlines of the affordability challenges.
“We hear so many concerns, so much stress about people’s financial situations, and it’s really angry-making,” said Magaña, who described herself as an independent. “One of the main pain points that I hear is how people can’t get their mental health needs attended to due to the cost, whether they have insurance coverage or not. The federal government certainly needs to address this, but if there’s anything that local governments can do to provide people with healthcare, they should.”
Considering the midterms, Magaña said the country is at a pivotal moment for change.
“If people aren’t squeezed and having to spend every hour of every day trying to eke out another couple of pennies, then maybe we could actually have happier, healthier communities that actually work together and make this place work. I mean, I hate to say it, but make it great,” she said.
Noelle Annonen, Nicole Grundmeier and Daniel Wheaton contributed to this story.
The Midwest Newsroom is an enterprise journalism collaboration that includes Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. There are many ways you can contact us with story ideas and leads, and you can find that information here. The Midwest Newsroom is a partner of The Trust Project. We invite you to review our ethics and practices here.
METHODOLOGY
In April, The Midwest Newsroom and its partners in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska distributed a questionnaire that asked people to share their financial pain points. Not a scientific poll or survey, the questionnaire was designed to hear directly from Midwesterners on issues related to the cost of living, or “affordability,” as many refer to the challenges of making ends meet. This outreach helped our team connect with people around the region, some of whom agreed to be interviewed for news articles. You can find our stories here.
As a followup, in September, The Midwest Newsroom sent a questionnaire to the more than 200 people who responded to us in the spring. We asked people if they were registered to vote and, if so, how the cost of living would play into their midterm election voting decisions.
For this story, Holly Edgell brought together interviews with Midwesterners gathered over the course of six months. She and her colleagues interviewed experts and consulted data about costs, inflation and other economic indicators from a variety of sources.
REFERENCES
The American Affordability Tracker (Urban Institute | Oct. 26, 2026)
3 Charts That Explain the Economy as Voters Head to the Polls (The New York Times | Oct. 18, 2026)
Many Americans Are Struggling to Afford Basic Necessities (Pew Research | Oct. 14, 2026)
American Workers, the Economy, and the 2026 Midterms (Economic Innovation Group | Oct. 13, 2026)
Trump struggles to show voters he's focused on the cost of living (NPR | Oct. 12, 2026)
Most Americans blame Trump for high prices as midterms approach, a new AP-NORC poll finds. (Associated Press | Oct. 1, 2026)
RentCafe Average Rent Database (RentCafe.com | Sept. 30, 2026)
Average Sales Price of Houses Sold for the Midwest Census Region (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis | Jul 24, 2026)
Child Care in America: Price and Supply (Child Care Aware of America | May 2026)
TYPE OF STORY
News – Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Help Us Report - Asks for input, insights, clarifications, anecdotes, documentation, etc.
