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Issue of September 9, 2026

Monthly

The Household Audit

Once a month we take a single household apart with its consent and put the numbers on the page: what comes in, what goes out, who does which hours, and where the whole arrangement is carrying a load it cannot carry indefinitely. The household is real and anonymised. The figures are theirs, unrounded.

Accounts

The Household Audit: Two Teachers, Three Kids, $118,000, No Savings

The Prathers have a pension, a house with equity in it, and $0 they could reach by Friday. They are not a story about bad decisions. They are a story about what happens when a household's income arrives on a school-year calendar and its costs do not.

The Household AuditCatherine “Cat” Lindgren4 min

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