NJ keeps getting more expensive — so what are you still spending on

Last night I was at Citizens Bank Park watching the Phillies with over 40,000 other fans.  They all put out big bucks for tickets, parking, food, a couple of drinks. It was not cheap. They did not care.

New Jersey American Water just announced it wants a 12% rate increase. That would push the average monthly bill to $94 — the second rate hike in two years. Water shutoffs in this state more than doubled last year. The hardest hit zip code in the entire state was Absecon, just outside Atlantic City, where service was cut off 963 times in a single year. A 429 percent increase from the year before.

Property taxes average over $10,000 a year statewide. Auto insurance that keeps climbing. Electric bills that stopped being predictable years ago. Stay NJ is being negotiated down from $6,500 to $4,000 with four weeks left on the clock. And now water.

I know all of this. I think about it constantly. I write about it constantly. And I was still at the Phillies game last night because some things are worth it anyway.

That is what I want to talk about today.

SEE ALSO: 8 ways NJ residents make an expensive state even more expensive 

Tony and AJ Had It Right

In the final scene of The Sopranos, Tony and AJ are sitting in that booth at Holsten's in Bloomfield. The onion rings are on the table. Journey is on the jukebox. And AJ says something that has stayed with me since the night it aired.

Focus on the good times.

Tony pushes back — don't be sarcastic. And AJ says — isn't that what you said one time? Try to remember the times that were good?

Tony thinks about it. Yeah, he says. It's true, I guess.

New Jersey in 2026 is expensive. It has always been expensive and it keeps getting more expensive and Trenton keeps finding new ways to remind you of that. But somewhere in the middle of all of it, you are still living your life. You are still doing the things that make the rest of it worth tolerating.

What are those things? I have been thinking about that since last night.

The Things Worth Every Penny

For me it is live sports. Last night was not just a baseball game — it was watching Christopher Sanchez get two standing ovations from a packed ballpark for a streak that ended with grace and dignity. That is something you cannot stream, cannot replay the same way, cannot get back. I was there with my friends Dave, TC and Bruce. Kyle was there with his girlfriend. We talked about it on air this morning. That is worth whatever it costs to get through the gate.

For a lot of New Jersey families it is the Shore week. The same house, the same town, the same week every summer. People stretch their budgets all year to protect that one week. They will cut everything else before they cut that. I have heard it on the show for years. It is not a luxury to those families. It is the point.

It is the family dinners. The birthday parties. The graduation celebrations at the Italian restaurant where they push three tables together and the cannoli comes out and nobody is looking at their phone. That is the thing people are working for.

It is the hobbies. The fishing trips. The birding walks at dawn when the light is coming up over the marsh and you are the only person who knows what that particular moment sounds like. The garden that your partner has spent twenty years learning how to grow. The road trips to places you have been talking about going for years.

It is the season tickets and the concert tickets and the Shore house deposits and the youth sports registration fees and the weekend away with people you have known since before any of this was expensive.

The Math Nobody Does Out Loud

Here is the thing about New Jersey residents that I have come to believe after writing about this all year. They are not bad at math. They know exactly what everything costs. They do the calculation every time.

And they keep deciding that certain things are worth it anyway.

Not everything. People are making real cuts, real sacrifices, real decisions about what they can and cannot afford. The 18,000 water shutoffs last year are not a statistic — they are 18,000 families who ran out of options. That is real and it matters.

But for the people who still have room to choose, the choice they keep making is not the financially optimal one. It is the human one. The game, the trip, the dinner, the hobby, the week at the Shore. The thing that makes the commute and the taxes and the water bill and the insurance premium feel like the price of admission to a life that is actually worth living.

AJ had it right. Tony had it right.

Focus on the good times. Try to remember the times that were good.

New Jersey keeps raising the cost of everything. It has not yet figured out how to raise the cost of that.