Over the past few years, affordability concerns have stressed many middle-class budgets. It’s always important to be prepared for a potential downturn. RSM projects a 30% chance of a recession in 2026, due to risks like tariffs and restrictive immigration, which could spur more inflation while leading to weak consumer spending.
To get a sense of what this prep should look like, I first asked ChatGPT to mock up a middle-class budget for a dual-income household in the U.S. with one kid. Below is the recession-ready budget the artificially intelligent (AI) chatbot gave me.
