How we get these numbers.

Sources, series by series

• Gas, statewide — U.S. Energy Information Administration, weekly Texas retail series for regular gasoline (published Mondays). The federal source of record, and the series behind our ten-year trend chart. We moved the statewide figure to EIA when we automated it: AAA publishes no public API, and scraping their site violates their terms, so EIA is the only source we can update reliably and cite cleanly.
• Gas, metro — AAA daily metro and county averages. EIA publishes Texas statewide only, so metro figures stay AAA-sourced and are entered by hand. Metro figures are area averages; your corner station will differ.
• Groceries & overall inflation — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index (monthly, ~the 2nd week for the prior month). National figures unless marked otherwise; BLS does not publish an RGV-specific CPI, and metro CPIs for DFW/Houston publish on a bimonthly cycle. "Food at home" = grocery stores; "food away from home" = restaurants.
• Food category detail & forecasts — USDA Economic Research Service, Food Price Outlook (monthly).
• Home prices — two deliberately different measures. Redfin reports median sale prices (what actually sold); Zillow's Home Value Index estimates the value of all homes, sold or not. They can point in different directions in a shifting market — when that happens we show both, because each answers a different question. Statewide forecasts come from the Texas A&M Texas Real Estate Research Center (TRERC).
• Rent — TRERC statewide series; metro rents from published market reports (e.g., RentCafe), labeled per page.

Rules we follow

• Every number is dated. A price without a date is an opinion.
• Longest honest window. Trends show the full available arc — spikes, collapses, and all — never a start-date chosen to make a point.
• Both directions, same prominence. Falling prices get reported with the same weight as rising ones. Ochre means up, green means down; that's the whole editorial system.
• National vs. Texas vs. metro is always labeled. When only a national series exists, we say so rather than implying local precision.
• No candidates, parties, or officeholders — ever. Causes of price changes are reported when supported by the data source (oil markets, weather, supply), not attributed to political actors.
• Dollar prices vs. indexes. Where BLS publishes actual average prices (eggs, motor fuel), we show dollars for both periods. Where a category exists only as a price index (groceries overall, restaurants, all-items CPI), "year ago" reads n/a (index) and the yearly change appears as a percentage — an index measures change, not a single price, and we won't invent a dollar figure it doesn't contain.
• Derived values are labeled. When a source states a current level and its own year-over-year change (e.g., Zillow, Redfin), we may compute the implied year-ago level and say so.
• Corrections are public. Errors get fixed in place and logged below.

Update log

• Jul 31, 2026 — Every hand-written claim on the site was checked against the series it cites, and eight were corrected. Eggs were the worst of it: the receipt board's own source line said they rose 4.3% in June, in both languages, when BLS Average Price data (APU0000708111) shows they fell 2.3%, to $2.14 — the board's note contradicted the board. Also corrected: "the largest one-month price decline since April 2020" (June 2026 was −0.4%; March 2020 at −0.5% and April 2020 at −0.8% were both deeper, so the superlative is gone and the figure now stands on its own); crude "up roughly 50% since conflict escalated this spring" (WTI is about 18% above its March low, and the causal attribution is dropped — nothing we can source supports it); the national average "toward $4 — its highest since August 2022" (it is $4.10, and it was $4.15 on June 8, seven weeks earlier); Texas's "second-lowest gas taxes in the country" (the 20¢/gal state rate trails Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii and New Mexico — the 38.4¢ combined figure was right and is kept); DFW's "13¢ in a mid-July week as crude neared $80" (about 18¢, in the week of July 20, with WTI above $90); and Houston's "roughly 90¢ under the national average" (about 70¢). Two more errors surfaced in the same eggs card: it called $2.14 "roughly half" the $3.77 eggs cost a year ago, when $2.14 is 43% below that — "half" only holds against the $4.48 Q2-2025 average the board uses, so the card now names both baselines; and the board footnote put the 2025 peak at $5.69 when the series peaks at $6.23 in March 2025. The check now runs monthly as scripts/audit-claims.mjs, against the corrected wording, so these can't drift again unnoticed. Housing, income and AAA metro figures still have no public API behind them and remain unverified.
• Jul 30, 2026 — First figures published through the automated pipeline. Statewide gas $3.55 (AAA, Jul 16) → $3.64 (EIA, week of Jul 27). The year-ago comparison moved with it, $2.79 → $2.74, because that column now compares EIA to EIA rather than borrowing AAA's earlier reading — the change is a like-for-like correction, not a revision to what gas cost last summer. Coffee's June reading was revised by BLS from −2.0% to −1.8%; routine revisions to already-published months are exactly why each run re-fetches prior periods instead of trusting our stored copy. The "data as of" line on the homepage and Spanish page is now derived from the newest figure on the page rather than typed by hand, so it can no longer fall out of step with the board beneath it.
• Jul 30, 2026 — Statewide gas source changed from AAA to the U.S. EIA weekly Texas retail series. AAA has no public API and their terms forbid scraping, so AAA figures could only ever be re-typed by hand; EIA is the federal source of record and lets the statewide number update on a schedule. Metro gas figures remain AAA-sourced and hand-entered. Same week: statewide gas, groceries, eggs, coffee, restaurant meals and headline CPI began updating from BLS and EIA on a schedule — every figure is still reviewed and approved by a person before it appears here, and housing, rent and all metro figures remain entirely hand-entered.
• Jul 22, 2026 — Eggs restated from index-change to BLS Average Price dollars ($2.14/dozen Jun 2026 vs. $4.48 Q2-2025 avg): down ~52% yearly, and we show both. Corrected Jul 31, 2026: this entry originally read "down ~52% yearly despite +4.3% in June". Eggs did not rise 4.3% in June — BLS Average Price data shows they fell 2.3%. Remaining index-only rows now read "n/a (index)" instead of a blank. Homepage driver card rewritten to match.
• Jul 21, 2026 — Statewide gas updated $3.41 (Jul 9 reading) → $3.55 (Jul 16 Weekend Gas Watch) after a 13¢ one-week jump; ten-year chart endpoint revised to match. Metro pages launched (DFW, Houston, San Antonio, RGV). Spanish homepage launched.
• Jul 21, 2026 — Site launched with June 2026 CPI (released Jul 14) and July AAA gas data.