Picture two families with the same paycheck.

Both have a good year. Both end up with an extra $1,000.

The first family spends theirs the way most of us would: a weekend trip, a few nights at the movies, a new phone.

The second family takes their $1,000 and puts it into an asset, something that keeps paying them back long after the money is spent.

Same thousand dollars. Same street. Same year.

Give it twenty years, and those two families can end up in completely different places. Why would one small choice lead somewhere so different?

Look around, and it is hard to miss the contradiction.

We live in one of the most prosperous times in history. There is more technology, more opportunity, and more wealth being created than ever before.

And yet groceries cost more every trip. A first home feels out of reach for a lot of young families. Two incomes generate more than one ever did, and yet still somehow purchase less. People who are doing everything right, working hard, getting raises, and saving what they can, still feel like they are falling behind.

So which is it? Are we prosperous, or are we struggling?

And how can it be both at the same time?

The answer is not the billionaires.

Inflation gets blamed for a lot, and it usually comes up as if it were weather: something that just happens to us.

But is it? Why does it seem to hit some families so much harder than others? Why do some people seem almost untouched by rising prices, while others feel every one of them? And why does a raise so often disappear before it ever feels like a raise?

If you have ever gotten more income and felt no richer a year later, you have already run into this.

Ross Brunson's upcoming book, The Day the Dollar Disappeared, builds toward one sentence:

Earning is taxed, eroded, and exposed. Owning is sheltered, deferred, and indexed to inflation.

Read it again slowly.

What happens to a dollar you earn? What happens to a dollar you own? And why would the exact same dollar be treated so differently depending on which side of that sentence it sits on?

Is affordability really a budgeting problem? Or is something else going on?

This month looks a little different. Ross and I are sitting down together in the same room, on camera, with a set of simple diagrams from the book on screen. I get to ask him the hard questions, push back where I'm skeptical, and have him walk through what is actually going on.

A few of the questions on the table:

This is general education, not legal, tax, or financial advice, and every family's situation is different. But if you have ever wondered why working harder seems to buy less every year, this is the conversation to be in the room for.

Join us live at Inner Circle on Wednesday, November 18, at 12:00 PM Mountain, 2:00 PM Eastern. Can't make it live? The replay will be in the Inner Circle membership area.