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Monday, August 24, 2026Vol. II · No. 24 · Omaha, Nebraska
MoneyHole

Shoveling You Deeper Into Financial Wisdom

Omaha, Nebraska

MARKETS
HOPE-4.2%RENT+11.8%WAGEunch.VIBES+212.5%DOOM+3.7%ROCK+9.1%BEANS-0.03%EGGS+14.6%DEBT+6.9% · recordDGNTY-18.0%SLEEP-2.4%PTO-100.0% · expiredRSUHALTED · pending vestPLSMA+2.2% · twice weeklyPNTS+1,400 ptsLATTE$7.25HSTL+45.0%STRTRno bidTMSHRlimit downIRA-0.9%SSA255$255 · unch. since 1954BOOMR+52.0%GENZdelistedCOPE+18.4%LUCKunch.FICO-41 ptsEQTY+0.0% · theoreticalDDCTBL+$3,400TIPS+22.0% · prompted at kioskTIME-24 hrsMOMLNrestructuredBRNCH$61.00LOYAL-0.4%PENSNno longer quotedSILVR+1.1% · still not gold

The National FabricN · The Enrollment Economy

N3N

Directional State Realists

The identical bed, the identical meal plan, $7,260, and a degree that has to actually work.

Reference marketFirst identified in Hattiesburg, Mississippi (ZIP area 39406).

Also found inFlorence, Alabama; Spearfish, South Dakota; Langston, Oklahoma; West Liberty, West Virginia; Youngstown, Ohio.

Thesis

Room and board here is a third of what the same room and the same board cost at the top of the market, and the difference purchases nothing except the name over the door.

The same product as the coastal private college, priced in the bottom eighth of the country.

Portrait

In their own words

  • Age20
  • Income$9,400
  • Net worth$0
  • EducationIn progress
  • HomeA double in a building from 1968
  • Ownership0%
  • HouseholdOne resident, one roommate, one job, no household
  • VehicleA 2009 sedan that has to keep working
  • Debt$19,000, in her own name, and counted
Vice
None she would describe as one
Most likely to
Finish in four years because a fifth is not funded
Signals
A work-study badge, a commuter mug, a course plan she has actually read

Who they are

One resident, twenty, earning $9,400 a year in a job that is scheduled around a class timetable, paying $7,260 for a bed and a meal plan in a building put up in 1968. She carries $19,000 in loans in her own name and can tell you the number without checking, which distinguishes her from most of the households in this atlas. The degree is nursing or education or accounting, chosen because it has a job attached to it. She will finish in four years because there is no funding for a fifth, and this is the single most consequential fact about how she spends a week.

Our neighborhood

Ninety-eight per cent of the people in this ZIP code live in university housing, on a campus that is the largest employer for forty miles. Median age twenty. The town exists in a stable and unsentimental relationship with the institution: the institution is the payroll, the payroll is the town, and both are aware of it. Room and board sits in the bottom eighth of the country — $7,260 against $20,786 for the same arrangement in Massachusetts — and the two numbers describe an identical bed, an identical dining hall and an identical nineteen-year-old.

Shopping

A discount grocery eleven minutes away, visited with a list. The meal plan is used completely, because it has been paid for. Textbooks are rented, shared, or found. One sweatshirt with the school's name, bought at the start and worn for four years.

Spending

Room and board $7,260, in-state tuition, $19,000 in loans and $9,400 in wages, all of which she can produce on request. There is a spreadsheet. The largest recurring discretionary line is fuel for a 2009 sedan that has to keep working, and the second is a phone bill she is still on her mother's plan for.

Media

The course catalogue, read carefully. A group chat for the cohort. Two hours of something on a laptop after a shift. She does not follow anybody who went to a school like this one, because the people who become famous for a school are from the other kind.

Interests

The job. The cohort. A clinical placement forty minutes away that she drives to. Going home most weekends, which is two hours and which she does not describe as a sacrifice because the alternative costs money.

Where they live

Darker is more of them.

N3 · DIRECTIONAL STATE REALISTS

ZIP CODES

—

How thick on the ground

$61K

Median household income

0.84× the national median

$291K

Typical home value

1.09× the national median

4.8×

Home value against income

1.28× the national median

36%

Bachelor's degree or higher

1.54× the national median

51%

Owner-occupied

Share of occupied units

$1,334

Median gross rent

Monthly, contract plus utilities

2.41

Average household size

Persons per occupied unit

30.7

Median age

Years

How they compare

Against the average American household.

  • Median household income

    0.84×

    $61K here$72K everywhere else

  • Typical home value

    1.09×

    $291K here$267K everywhere else

  • Bachelor's degree or higher

    1.54×

    35.7% here23.2% everywhere else

  • Home value against household income

    1.28×

    4.80× here3.75× everywhere else

Who lives next door

Household types that turn up on the same blocks.

The receipts

No.SignalAgainst the countryReading
  1. 01Residents living in college housing97th9.4%
  2. 02Median age9th30.7 yrs
  3. 03Enrolled in college94th20.3%
  4. 04Annual room and board21st$8.5K
  5. 05Dormitory beds nearby92nd4,567
  6. 06Never-married adults88th48.4%
  7. 07Walks or bikes to work80th7.4%
  8. 08College enrolment per resident69th0.43
  9. 09People per square kilometre73rd966 /sq mi
  10. 10Rural-urban continuum position38th0.26

SourcesFigures from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Education. Everything else is observation.