>Usually if official statistics and what you see are misaligned, its the official statistics that are wrong.
See, I think the opposite. If your numbers differ from the US gov. official ones, you're either doing something wrong, or measuring a different thing.
The BLS in particular aims for consistency in reporting. They ask people what they bought, and for how much, then they go around collecting real world pricing information about products.
No other entity is putting that much work and effort into collecting pricing information. So anyone reporting different numbers is less accurate than the official BLS ones.
Even people who complain that they under-report "real" inflation use BLS numbers, but they change the weights on the various categories such that categories experiencing the highest inflation are also weight the highest.
See, I think the opposite. If your numbers differ from the US gov. official ones, you're either doing something wrong, or measuring a different thing.
The BLS in particular aims for consistency in reporting. They ask people what they bought, and for how much, then they go around collecting real world pricing information about products.
No other entity is putting that much work and effort into collecting pricing information. So anyone reporting different numbers is less accurate than the official BLS ones.
Even people who complain that they under-report "real" inflation use BLS numbers, but they change the weights on the various categories such that categories experiencing the highest inflation are also weight the highest.