Inflation fears are high for most Americans. But a new poll shows one group is particularly worried
Anxiety about costs and affordability is particularly high among Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians, even at a moment when economic stress is widespread, according to a new poll.
About half of Asian American and Pacific Islander adults said they wanted the government to prioritize addressing the high cost of living and inflation, according to the survey from AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which was conducted in early December. In comparison, a December AP-NORC poll found that about one-third of U.S. adults overall rated inflation and financial worries as the most pressing problems.
The findings indicate that this small but fast-growing group is not convinced by President Donald Trump’s attempts to tamp down worries about inflation and defend his tariffs. Even when considering partisanship, AAPI Democrats and Independents — and even AAPI Republicans — are at least slightly more likely than those groups overall to mention inflation and costs. Concern about costs has risen among AAPI adults since last year, when about 4 in 10 AAPI adults said they wanted the government to focus on this issue.
Like Americans overall, AAPI adults have also become more focused on health care issues over the past year.
The poll is part of an ongoing project exploring the views of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, whose views are usually not highlighted in other surveys because of small sample sizes and lack of linguistic representation.
Jayakumar Natarajan, a 56-year-old manager for a major tech company living in the San Francisco Bay Area, is rethinking his goal of retiring at 60 because of climbing costs in basic goods and health care. He can afford to live the way he wants for now, but is considering delaying retirement or moving outside the U.S., where prices are lower.
The cost of health care is very much on his mind. “I think it will really make a big difference in the way I think about retirement planning,” he said.
AAPI adults are worried about rising costs
Inflation and affordability loom large for AAPI adults, even compared to other economic concerns, the survey found. About 2 in 10 AAPI adults mentioned housing costs or jobs and unemployment as priorities for the government to work on in the coming year, which was generally in line with Americans overall.
Balancing financial obligations has become especially challenging for people living in high-cost areas, where a steady salary may not cover a growing family. Kevin Tu, 32, and his wife recently reached two milestones — buying a new home outside of Seattle in Lynnwood, Washington, and expecting their first child. The couple works full-time and Tu also has a math tutoring business, but he’s still nervous about what will happen after the baby arrives.
“I’m trying to figure out how to balance possible part-time day care with our mortgage, with cost of living,” said Tu, who is Taiwanese American.
Black, Hispanic and AAPI adults were more apt than white adults to bring up unemployment, jobs and housing costs as priorities, the surveys found.
Part of what may explain AAPI adults’ increasing worry about everyday costs is the largest AAPI adult populations reside in states and major metropolitan cities with higher costs of living and higher rent, such as California and New York.
Also, while tariffs have impacted American consumers across the board, they have a particularly strong effect on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who prefer certain imported goods such as food and clothing. Karthick Ramakrishnan, AAPI Data executive director and researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, recalls how last year, some AAPI shoppers were going to ethnic grocery stores and “stockpiling” ahead of tariffs kicking in.
“When it comes to costs for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, it’s just not cost of general market groceries but ethnic market groceries,” Ramakrishnan said. “It’s something visible to them and potentially causing anxiety and worry.”
Health care is also a priority for AAPI adults
Many AAPI adults, 44%, also want the government to prioritize health care in the coming year. That’s not meaningfully different from among U.S. adults overall, emphasizing Americans’ renewed focus on the issue after a year of health care cuts.
Srilasya Volam, a 25-year-old business consultant in Atlanta, Georgia, said that some of her family members have embarked on “ medical tourism ” trips as a result of high U.S. health care costs, a practice of traveling to other countries for more cost-effective medical procedures.
“It’s cheaper for us to get a flight ticket and go to India and have a medical procedure and come back than it is to have that done here,” she said. “When I was younger, we would just go to India and we’d be like, now that we’re here, let’s do everything: the dental checkups, every checkup. It’s a lot more cost effective.”
The poll found that about 6 in 10 AAPI adults are “extremely” or “very” concerned about their health care costs increasing in 2026, which is roughly in line with U.S. adults overall.
Falling confidence in the government’s ability to make progress
The survey found that AAPI adults are less confident in the government’s ability to make progress on the important issues facing the country than they were just after the 2024 election.
About 7 in 10 AAPI adults say they are “not at all” or just “slightly confident” that the government will make progress on key issues, up from 60% at the end of 2024.
Dissatisfaction with the Trump administration may be a factor. And while the economy is top of mind, other factors could be feeding the fear that the government won’t change things for the better this year.
Ernie Roaza — a 66-year-old retired geologist in Tallahassee, Florida — is a first generation immigrant to the U.S. from South Korea, where he grew up under a dictatorship. He worries that Trump is doing “everything that dictators do,” adding, “I’ve seen it before. It’s almost laughable, but it’s scary at the same time.”
He remains optimistic that the country will get through it.
“This administration will make things worse,” Roaza said. “But in every administration we’ve had, there are hills and valleys. We’re in the valleys right now.”
President Donald Trump ‘s plans for bringing homeownership within reach of more Americans involve pushing for lower interest rates on home loans and credit cards, and banning large institutional investors from buying single-family homes.
In his address Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump outlined four policies his administration is pursuing in a bid to make homeownership more affordable. Each had been previously mentioned by him or his administration in recent weeks, part of a broader push to address affordability generally, a hot-button issue with voters heading into the midterms.
The U.S. housing market has been in a sales slump dating back to 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows. The combination of higher mortgage rates, years of skyrocketing home prices and a chronic shortage of homes nationally following more than a decade of below-average home construction have left many aspiring homeowners priced out of the market. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes remained stuck last year at 30-year lows.
In his remarks, Trump stressed the need to lower interest rates on home loans and credit cards in order to give aspiring homebuyers more financial flexibility to save up for a down payment on a home and more purchasing power when it comes time to buy.
“We can drop interest rates to a level, and that’s one thing we do want to do,” said Trump. “That’s natural. That’s good for everybody. You know, the dropping of the interest rate, we should be paying a much lower interest than we are.”
Trump noted that he has directed the federal government to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds, a move he said would help reduce mortgage rates. Trump said earlier this month that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have $200 billion in cash that would be used to buy mortgage bonds. However, some economists have said such a move would likely have only a minimal impact on mortgage rates.
Trump, who spent much of last year demanding that the Federal Reserve lower interest rates, also reiterated that he will be announcing a new Fed chair soon to replace Jerome Powell, whose term as chair is due to end in May.
“I think they’ll do a very good job,” he said.
Still, Fed rate cuts don’t always translate into lower mortgage rates. That’s what happened in the fall of 2024 after the central bank cut its main rate for the first time in more than four years. Instead of falling, mortgage rates marched higher, eventually cresting above 7% in January this year. At that time, the 10-year Treasury yield was climbing toward 5%.
More recently, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage was at 6.06% last week, its lowest level in more than three years, according to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac.
While lower mortgage rates help boost homebuyers’ purchasing power, the biggest hurdle many aspiring homeowners face is being able to save up for a down payment.
To that end, Trump said he is asking Congress for legislation that would mandate credit card issuers cap interest rates at 10% for one year — after the industry ignored his demand earlier this month that they implement the cap by Jan. 20. The average rate on credit cards is around 21%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Trump also reiterated that he wants to block large institutional investors f rom buying single-family homes, so that Americans don’t have to compete with such well-funded rivals when they shop for a home.
“Homes are built for people, not for corporations, and America will not become a nation of renters,” he said.
While touting his plans to open up the housing market to more Americans, Trump stressed that he didn’t want to take any actions that would tip the housing market too far in favor of buyers at the expense of millions of homeowners who have benefited from strong home equity gains.
“Every time you make it more and more and more affordable for somebody to buy a house cheaply, you’re actually hurting the value of those houses, obviously, because the one thing works in tandem with the other,” he said, adding: “Now, if I want to really crush the housing market, I could do that so fast that people could buy houses, but you would destroy a lot of people that already have houses.”
Trump didn’t specify which policies would cause that to happen.
Trump issued an executive order late Tuesday directing his administration to review the laws that govern how big institutional investors make large purchases of single-family homes and determine whether such investors are engaging in anti-competitive practices.
The order, which exempts companies that build homes for rent, also includes provisions to give ordinary home shoppers the opportunity to buy foreclosed homes before investors do and bars government housing agencies from guaranteeing, insuring or otherwise facilitating large institutional investors from buying single-family homes.
Still, it’s unclear how the administration will define a large investor. And while some metro areas, like Atlanta and Phoenix, have a larger share of corporate-owned single-family homes for rent, the vast majority of rental houses are owned by small individual investors, which wouldn’t be barred from buying more homes.
“It probably won’t make a noticeable impact on the housing market,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin.
Trump was expected to give more details about his housing policy in the speech, but devoted most of it to other subjects. Kevin Hassett, director of Trump’s National Economic Council, told Bloomberg that Trump was just “foreshadowing” an upcoming policy announcement. The White House is reportedly considering a new way for Americans with a 401(k) retirement savings plan to fund the down payment on a home, among other policies.
I’m a classic satisficer: I’m usually quick about making decisions and often fall back on the tried-and-true. Some people are optimizers, carefully analyzing almost every choice, whether it’s a new sofa or a cup of coffee.
If you want to make decent, “good enough” choices about your financial plan and portfolio and get onto other things, what strategies should you employ? And what should you stop doing? Here are some strategies to embrace.
Eliminate ‘onesies’ and embrace simple building blocks
Step away from those individual stocks. Forget I bonds and laddered portfolios of individual Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities. If you’re a satisficer, they’re not for you. Reduce your number of accounts and the holdings within them.
A portfolio with fewer moving parts is easier to oversee and simpler to document in case your loved ones or a financial advisor needs to take the wheel. Moreover, Morningstar research indicates that investors tend to do a better job buying and holding broadly diversified investments than they do ones that are more focused.
While they might not compel over some shorter time horizons, total-market index funds have been highly competitive with actively managed funds on a long-term basis, and they require little to no oversight. That means that satisficer portfolios should be heavy on total market index funds and even all-in-one investments like target-date funds. Satisficers should have as few accounts as possible, too.
Minimize other financial relationships
I’m part of a group chat with some delightful people who are keen to maximize their gains from credit cards and hotel loyalty programs. They’re always sharing tips on new card offers and swapping in and out of cards to score free travel.
These people have traveled all over the world, and there’s something to be said for beating the banks at their own game. They’re also eager to take advantage of free financing programs when buying cars, furniture, and electronics. Why not let the bank float you a loan and invest the funds in the interim, particularly now that you can earn a decent return on your safe money?
Yet as much as the math might argue for such strategies, managing multiple credit relationships requires time, energy, and discipline that most people don’t have to spare. For that reason, taking a minimalist approach to credit cards and other financial relationships is a good policy for most households, especially satisficing ones. My credit-card-optimizer friends might disagree, but I tend to think that a single, well-chosen credit card or two is plenty.
Automate everything you can
The data suggest that dollar-cost averaging is inferior to lump-sum investing. To which I say, “So what?” The fact is, most of us don’t have big lump sums lying around; we’re able to invest only as we earn money and save it.
Making automatic investments addresses a number of financial pain points in a single shot. It eliminates any question marks about whether and when to invest. And if the target investment amounts are high enough and you increase them as you receive pay increases and bonuses, it also obviates the need to track expenses or budget in the traditional sense.
Pay for help if you need it
Here’s another way in which the satisficers may be willing to depart from the optimizers. Yes, paying for financial planning guidance costs money, maybe more than you think it should. (It’s not unusual for good-quality planners to charge $350-$500 an hour or more.)
But if paying for professional financial help frees you up to do other things you enjoy more and it provides peace of mind with your decision-making, it can be money well spent. Moreover, a planner can help point out blind spots that even the most competent DIYers may have missed, while also serving as a valuable receptacle of financial information in caseyou’re unable to manage your own finances at some point. Finally, planners can leverage high-powered software that puts more precision behind decisions like whether to convert traditional IRAs to Roth.