For middle class people, new cell phones, PCs, and car payments are major expenses.
Inflation figures have never tried to capture tech improvements.
But these days the biggest changes to cell phones, PCs, and cars is they last so much longer.
The average age of cars in the US fleet keeps going up, reflecting just how long cars last now.
Likewise, in 2013 it would be pretty bad to have a 2010 cell phone. The battery would be in bad shape and it would be badly out of date. But in 2017, I’d be just fine with a 2014 cell phone.
The useful life of a PC these days I now consider to average about six years, and I am a power user.
The thing that used to fail the most on PCs was the hard drive. But now I use SSDs, which last a very long time with no moving parts.
In 2007, I would consider a new $600 cell phone every 2 years and new $1500 PC every 3 years to be typical for power users who care about these things. So that is $800 a year on these things, ($960 in current dollars).
Now it is a new $800 phone every three years and a new $1300 PC every 6 years, so that is about $480 a year. Almost exactly half of my prior pattern, which I think reflected other techie power users too.
Cord-cutting and Netflix seems to be also cutting entertainment expenses. And wow, TVs just keep getting cheaper and cheaper. For the same specs, seems like 25% decline in price per year is typical.
