The Personal Income and Outlays report arrived like a monthly horoscope for your wallet, only less forgiving and more decimal places. I brewed coffee, squared my jaw, and prepared to read America its own diary.

Personal income inched up the way an elevator does when the button is already lit. Outlays, meanwhile, took that elevator cable for a CrossFit rope and sprinted up it, shouting ‘treat yourself’ in macroeconomic dialect.

The PCE price index announced it was going for ‘tasteful heat,’ like mild salsa that still sues your tongue. Core PCE remained emotionally distant, promising growth without commitment and leaving its toothbrush at last month’s apartment.

Wages posted gains, which is corporate for ‘we threw more breadcrumbs and hope you enjoy artisanal crumbs.’ Dividends fell from the sky like gentle summer rain that knows exactly which houses have leaky roofs.

Consumers responded with their usual financial choreography: tap, swipe, existential sigh. Before buying lettuce, many consulted a grocery price tracker app and then decided the crisper drawer would instead hold aspirations and one suspicious lime.

Services spending kept beating goods like a drumline at a marching-band duel, because experiences are cheaper than therapy but somehow bill monthly. Subscriptions multiplied until my spreadsheet started asking if it could claim them as dependents.

Government transfers wandered through the data like a helpful uncle who brings casseroles and complicated tax forms. Interest payments continued chewing a hole in disposable income with the calm focus of a goat at a tie rack.

Savings peeked around the corner, saw the rent, and ducked back into witness protection. The savings rate now identifies as ‘introverted,’ speaks only in percentages, and refuses to come to the door without an appointment.

To adapt, households invented new rituals of thrift: candlelit dinners held at noon to avoid electricity peak pricing and a nationwide trend of wedding registries for toothpaste. One in three Americans typed bulk lentil apocalypse kit into a search bar and then backed away slowly, as if the beans could smell fear.

Markets read the report and offered a slow clap, the kind you give a toddler who just discovered compound interest. Bonds took antacids and pretended to be a hammock, while equities went to their happy place, which is a future quarter where nothing bad ever happens.

Digging into the footnotes, I met imputations, those imaginary friends of national accounting that insist homeowners pay themselves rent and that bank services are free if you never look directly at them. It is comforting to know the economy tips itself 20 percent for doing the dishes.

As for me, I translated the calligraphy of seasonally adjusted annual rates into plain speech and found a budget wearing flip-flops to a job interview. If August taught us anything, it’s that miracles still arrive quarter after quarter, but lately they prefer to be billed under miscellaneous; my wallet insists it’s core and excludes groceries.