Sneakflation: Same Price, Shorter Life

I had lunch the other day with my best friend, Russ Bosworth. We have been friends since we were about three or four years old. I call him Russ these days, but he will always be Rusty in my heart. Russ works at Spencer’s TV & Appliance, and if you have ever bought an appliance from him, you already know he is one of the good ones.

Somewhere between the sandwiches and the second refill, we got to talking about appliance prices. Russ said something that stopped me. A refrigerator or washer today costs about what the same appliance cost 15 years ago.

Think about that. Groceries, gas, insurance, housing and almost everything else has climbed. So how does a washing machine stay put?

Russ’s answer was the one you hear in every appliance store and every repair truck: the parts are cheaper now, so the machines don’t last as long. Same price, shorter life.

I wanted to know if that was true. So I went looking for real evidence, not opinions. Here is what I found, including one part that surprised me.

Russ is right about the price

The government’s own numbers back him up. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, appliance prices in 2026 are about 6% lower than they were in 2007. Over that same stretch, overall inflation ran about 2.5% a year.

In plain terms, the sticker on a new appliance has barely moved in nearly 20 years, while the rest of life got a lot more expensive. If anything, Russ undersold it.

Some appliances really are dying younger

This is where it gets interesting, because the answer is “yes, but not all of them.”

• Germany studied it. The country’s environment agency found that the share of large appliances replaced within five years because they broke more than doubled, from 3.5% in 2004 to 8.3% in 2012. Average first-use life for washers, dryers and refrigerators dropped by about a year, to 13 years.
• Norway studied it over 70 years. A 2025 study found washing machine lifespans fell 45%, from 19.2 years to 10.6 years. Ovens fell 39%, from 23.6 years to 14.3.
• The U.S. building industry noticed too. Data from the National Association of Home Builders shows that a gas and electric range now lasts about 15 years, down from 19 in 1993.

But here is the other half. That same Norwegian study found refrigerators, freezers, dishwashers and dryers have held remarkably steady for decades. So it is not every appliance, and it is not the whole story.

Is “planned obsolescence” real?

After I started writing this, I told my wife, Shannon, what I had found. She was not buying it. Shannon is convinced planned obsolescence is real, and she has good reason. An appliance repairman told her so himself, and he works on these machines every day.

So I went back and checked my sources again. And I have to tell you, she had a point.

The honest answer is yes, planned obsolescence is real. It just has not been proven everywhere people say it is.

It has a documented history. In the 1920s, the world’s biggest light bulb makers formed what became known as the Phoebus cartel. They agreed to limit household bulbs to about 1,000 hours, tested each other’s bulbs in a central lab, and fined members whose bulbs lasted too long. Average bulb life dropped by about a third in under a decade.

It still happens. In 2018, Italy’s competition authority fined Apple and Samsung for pushing software updates that slowed down older phones and hurried people into new ones. France made planned obsolescence a crime back in 2015, with possible prison time for executives.

So when someone tells you companies have done this, they are right.

What researchers have not been able to prove is that appliance makers build washers and refrigerators to die on a schedule. Germany’s environment agency studied that exact question and did not find evidence of deliberate, built-in failure. The Norwegian researchers pointed to something closer to home. In 1960, a family of four ran about two loads of laundry a week. By 2000, it was eight. Washers are built for a certain number of cycles, not years. Run it four times as often and it wears out sooner. They also found about 40% of ovens in Norway are thrown out while they still work, usually during a kitchen remodel.

So here is the fair answer. Planned obsolescence is real, and companies have been caught doing it. We just cannot prove that is what is happening inside your washer. If we want people to trust what we say about money and inflation, we have to be just as careful about what the evidence does and does not show.

What the repairman sees: built not to be fixed

Remember Shannon’s repairman? Here is where he and the researchers are both right. In 2021, the Federal Trade Commission sent a report to Congress called Nixing the Fix. The vote was unanimous and bipartisan.

The FTC found that many manufacturers make repair harder than it needs to be. They use adhesives that make parts difficult to replace, limit spare parts, and keep diagnostic software out of independent hands. After reviewing the reasons manufacturers gave, the FTC concluded many of them were not well-founded.

Modern appliances also rely on circuit boards and software. Those are wonderful when they work and expensive when they don’t. When a $400 control board fails on a $900 washer, a lot of families simply replace the whole machine.

Here is a clear example. The drum in your washer spins on bearings, and bearings wear out on every washer ever made. On older machines, replacing them was a routine, inexpensive repair. On many washers sold today, the outer tub is two plastic halves welded together at the factory, with the bearings sealed inside. When a bearing wears out, you cannot replace just the bearing. You replace the whole tub and drum, and that part often costs more than the machine is worth. One veteran repair engineer described these machines as unrepairable by design.

To be fair, a sealed tub does not make the bearing fail any sooner. But it turns a small repair into a dead machine.

So is your washer designed to fail? We cannot prove that. Is it often designed so it cannot be fixed? Yes. And for your family, the result can be the same: a machine that should have been repaired goes to the curb, and you buy another one.

Why this is sneakflation

This is the part I keep coming back to.

The price index measures what you pay at the register. It does not measure how many years you get for that money.

Let’s run the numbers honestly, and that means remembering that a dollar 20 years ago went a lot further than a dollar today. Prices overall are up about 66% since 2006. So an $800 washer back then cost the equivalent of about $1,330 in today’s money.

• Then: about $1,330 in today’s dollars, lasting 19 years, works out to about $69 a year.
• Now: $800, lasting 10.6 years, works out to about $75 a year.

The cheaper sticker price covered most of the shorter life, but not all of it. Owning a washer still costs you about 10% more per year than it used to, even though the price tag says it should cost less.

We already know this trick from the grocery store. The candy bar stays a dollar, but it gets a little smaller. Economists call it shrinkflation. With appliances, the box stays the same size. The time inside it gets smaller. There is a newer word for that: sneakflation. It describes the quieter ways value slips away, like lower quality, shorter durability or features that disappear, all while the price stays put.

Whether the cause is cheaper parts, harder repairs, heavier use, or all three, the result for your household is the same. Your dollar buys fewer years of service than it used to.

Measured in gold, the story changes

Here is where it gets interesting for anyone who saves in gold.

In 2006, gold averaged about $604 an ounce. That $800 washer cost about 1.3 ounces of gold. Today, with gold trading in the thousands, the same $800 buys roughly a fifth of an ounce or less.

Think about that. Measured in gold, the washer went from more than an ounce to a small fraction of one. The washer did not change that much. The dollar did.

That is the quiet lesson underneath all of this. Sneakflation, shrinkflation and plain old inflation all point back to the same thing: the dollar keeps losing ground, sometimes in plain sight and sometimes where you would never think to look. Someone who saved in gold back then can replace that shorter-lived washer today for a fraction of what it once cost them.

What this means for you

I am not telling you this to scare anybody. Most of the people who build, sell and fix these machines are good people trying to do right, Russ included.

But it is a good reminder of something we talk about all the time at CMI. The number on the price tag is not the whole story. Real value is measured over time, by what your money can still do for you years from now.

That is why so many families have trusted gold and silver for generations. Not as a get-rich-quick idea, but as a steady way to hold value while the world around it quietly changes.

And if your washer is still running after 15 years? Thank it. Then go buy Russ lunch.

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