The Daily Money: Americans are ditching their cars

Good morning! It’s Daniel de Visé with your Daily Money.

Owning a car isn’t cheap.

Auto insurance costs are up more than 50% over the past four years, Bailey Schulz reports. New vehicles jumped 20% in price during that time. Driving is getting costlier, too, with gas prices averaging more than $3.50 and maintenance costs rising because of labor shortages and the shift to more computerized vehicles.

Altogether, owning a new car costs about $12,000 a year, according to one estimate from AAA. It’s enough for some Americans to call it quits on driving altogether. 

Inflation pushes teens into the workforce

At 18, Michelle Chen covers her cell phone bills as well as school expenses. She squirrels away money for college. And, with her earnings from a summer job, she helps her parents by stocking the fridge with groceries and makes sure her two younger brothers have pocket money.

With consumer prices up more than 20% over the last three years, more teens are getting jobs to help out parents feeling the financial pinch, Bailey Schulz and Jessica Guynn report. 

In fact, research shows an increase in the percentage of youth paying for household bills. 

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📰 A great read 📰

We're going to wrap up with a recap of Friday's massive tech outage, which even briefly affected operations here at The Daily Money. (Our system locked up right as Betty Lin-Fisher and I were finishing a report on said outage. A reboot set things right.)

It all started with a software update.

Microsoft’s “blue screen of death” upended government services and businesses across the country Friday, disrupting emergency call centers, banks, airlines and hospitals. 

While Microsoft said a faulty software update from U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike was responsible for the major IT outage, the incident brought attention to just how big of a market share both companies have in their respective sectors.

How did it happen? What's next?

About The Daily Money

Each weekday, The Daily Money delivers the best consumer and financial news from USA TODAY, breaking down complex events, providing the TLDR version, and explaining how everything from Fed rate changes to bankruptcies impacts you.

Daniel de Visé covers personal finance for USA Today.