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Under Trump, Record Number of Americans Say Personal Finances Getting Worse
Americans' pessimistic economic outlook comes at a time when Republicans are pushing for US taxpayers to fund President Donald Trump's proposed $400 million luxury ballroom.
Apr 28, 2026
Just over a year after President Donald Trump promised the US was entering a "golden age," Americans are expressing unprecedented pessimism about the state of the economy.
Gallup on Tuesday released a poll showing that 55% of Americans say their personal finances are getting worse, which is a record high over the last 25 years of data.
For comparison, 49% of Americans said their finances were getting worse at the outset of the Great Recession in 2008, while 50% reported their finances were getting worse at both the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and at the height of the post-pandemic inflation crisis in 2023.
"Affordability continues to be the main financial challenge for US households, with concerns about various costs far outpacing all other financial worries," Gallup wrote. "Combined with the lingering effects of sustained inflation during and after the pandemic, Americans' financial perceptions and outlook remain cautious."
The poll was conducted between April 1 and April 15, and the financial pressures facing Americans have only grown in the two weeks since.
The price of Brent crude oil futures, which stood at $95 per barrel on April 15, has since spiked upward to more than $111 per barrel. Likewise, the average price of gas in the last week has grown from $4.02 per gallon to $4.17 per gallon, according to data collected by AAA.
The cost of oil surged starting in March after President Donald Trump launched an illegal war of choice with Iran, which responded by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz to most commercial shipping.
The war has also led to shortages of fertilizer during planting season, which has led some experts to warn of a global food crisis unless the strait opens in the very near future. The prospective food crisis could be further exacerbated by what scientists are projecting will be a “super El Niño,” a global climate phenomenon that would result in lower than average rainfall.
At the same time, a group of Republican lawmakers, led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), on Tuesday pushed for US taxpayers to foot the bill for Trump's planned $400 million luxury ballroom.
Hours after Graham unveiled his plan to fund the ballroom with taxpayer money, Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) appeared on Fox Business to bang the drum on building the ballroom.
"You would think this town would be tired of Donald Trump being right all the time," Moore said in response to critics of the project. "This president has always had the ability to see around corners and make decisions that are best for the country or his business. We need to have that ballroom built. God bless the president for doing it."
Rep. Riley Moore: "You would think this town would be tired of Donald Trump being right all the time. This president has always had the ability to see around corners and make decisions that are best for the country or his business. We need to have that ballroom built. God bless… pic.twitter.com/nosaVo0qJu
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 28, 2026
Sarah Longwell, a former Republican pollster who left the party over her disgust with Trump, pointed to polling averages aggregated by data analyst Nate Silver showing that nearly 69% of Americans disapprove of the president's handling of the cost of living, and suggested the push for the ballroom was wildly out of touch with Americans' concerns.
"You know what’ll turn these numbers around? A taxpayer-funded ballroom," she wrote sarcastically.
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‘America’s Not OK’: Surveys Show US Wellbeing in Steep Decline Under Trump
"Americans are drowning under rising costs, flat wages, high unemployment, and historic layoffs—it’s no wonder they’re concerned about how they’re going to make ends meet."
Apr 10, 2026
Two recently released surveys revealed a significant drop in Americans' self-reported wellbeing as the Trump administration launches illegal and deadly military conflicts and plunges the global economy into chaos.
On Friday, the University of Michigan issued its monthly Survey of Consumers, which showed that consumer sentiment in the US hit an all-time low after dropping by 11% since March, amid President Donald Trump's war of choice in Iran.
The drop in consumer sentiment was almost universal, the survey found, as "demographic groups across age, income, and political party all posted setbacks in sentiment, as did every component of the index, reflecting the widespread nature of this month’s fall."
As for the reasons for the decline, the survey found "many consumers blame the Iran conflict for unfavorable changes to the economy," such as a major spike in gas prices, which the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday increased by more than 20% in the month since the war began.
Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, noted that the latest consumer sentiment data showed Americans are even more sour on the economy now than they were in the summer of 2022, when the economy was dealing with the highest inflation it had seen in decades.
Kendall Witmer, rapid response director of the Democratic National Committee, seized on the consumer sentiment report and accused Trump of having "tanked the economy for working families."
"Americans are drowning under rising costs, flat wages, high unemployment, and historic layoffs," Witmer added. "It's no wonder they're concerned about how they’re going to make ends meet and Trump and [Vice President] JD Vance can’t be bothered to make life more affordable for them."
The record low in consumer sentiment comes just weeks after Gallup released its annual World Happiness Report, which showed that the US had fallen out of its rankings of the 20 happiest countries in the world.
The report says the decrease in US happiness largely came from "lower life evaluations among young adults," and points the finger at high social media use as a key factor in making young people miserable.
Specifically, the report finds "there is now overwhelming evidence of severe and widespread direct harms (such as sextortion and cyberbullying), and compelling evidence of troubling indirect harms (such as depression and anxiety)" from social media use, adding that "the harms and risks to individual users are so diverse and vast in scope that they justify the view that social media is causing harm at a population level."
Social media's impact on mental health has come into focus in recent weeks with juries in multiple states finding Big Tech companies liable for creating products that harm children.
In March, a New Mexico jury found social media giant Meta liable for harming children's mental health and safety, ordering the company to pay $375 million. A day later, a Los Angeles jury ordered Meta and Google to each pay $3 million in civil damages to a now-20-year-old woman who alleged harm and suffering caused by their products when she was an adolescent.
Journalist Derek Thompson took stock of the Gallup survey and the University of Michigan survey, as well as last year's General Social Survey that also documented a decline in US happiness, and declared, "America is not OK."
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One-Third of Americans Skipped Meals or Cut Back on Spending to Afford Healthcare in 2025
“No one is safe from making these trade-offs,” said a researcher at Gallup, which found even insured Americans in higher income brackets have avoided daily expenses to pay medical bills.
Mar 12, 2026
As the Trump administration spends an estimated $1 billion per day in taxpayer money bombing targets across Iran that have reportedly included an elementary school and healthcare facilities, Gallup released a survey Thursday that found one-third of Americans reported making financial trade-offs in order to pay for medical expenses last year.
The West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America polled nearly 20,000 US adults between June and August 2025 and found that roughly one-third of them—equivalent to about 82 million people in the richest country in the world—were forced cut back on at least one expense in order to afford healthcare.
Eleven percent of respondents—equivalent to 28 million Americans—skipped a meal or intentionally drove less in order to pay a medical bill. Fifteen percent, the equivalent of nearly 40 million people, said they prolonged a current prescription or borrowed money, and 9% cut back on utilities.
Those numbers were strikingly similar among people who have health insurance, with 14% of insured people prolonging prescriptions to avoid paying for a new one and 9% skipping meals. Among insured Americans, 29% made at least one trade-off to afford healthcare.
The crisis is also not exclusively affecting low-income people. A quarter of people in households earning $90,000 to $120,000 per year skipped meals or other expenses to pay medical bills, and 11% of people in households earning $240,000 or more did the same.
“No one is safe from making these trade-offs,” Ellyn Maese, a senior researcher at Gallup and research director for the West Health-Gallup Center, told The New York Times.
Sixty-two percent of people without healthcare coverage were forced to make trade-offs, and 55% of people with household incomes lower than $24,000 per year as well as 47% of people earning $24,000 to $48,000 avoided expenses.
Gallup also released the results of a separate poll taken between October and December 2025, which showed how Americans are delaying major life decisions as well as altering their daily lives to afford healthcare under the for-profit insurance system.
As the Trump administration's policies slashed healthcare for 15 million Americans and raised healthcare premiums for tens of millions of people—and as the White House demanded that families have more children—6% of respondents said they had postponed having or adopting a child due to healthcare costs, equivalent to about 16 million Americans.
Nearly 30% said healthcare costs led them to avoid taking a vacation, 18% said they delayed finding a different job, 15% said they postponed pursuing education or job training, and 14% said they postponed buying a home.
The polls are “telling a consistent story here,” Maese said.
The survey results were released weeks after the Trump administration proposed new regulations for healthcare plans purchased through the Affordable Care Act marketplace that would charge deductibles as high as $15,000 for individuals and $31,000 for families to offset lower monthly premiums—underscoring how the healthcare law passed 16 years ago has left American households vulnerable to rising costs under the for-profit health insurance system.
A survey taken last November by Data for Progress found that 65% of voters support expanding the Medicare system to everyone in the US, a proposal that would save an estimated $650 billion annually.
But as Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—who has sponsored Medicare for All legislation in the House—noted on Wednesday, Republicans and establishment Democrats continue to claim the proposal is unaffordable.
"When we ask for Medicare for All it’s 'too expensive,' and we 'don’t have the money,'" said Jayapal. "When the president drags us into his own personal war, no expense is spared. Our priorities are backwards."
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