“It simply means being fooled by money amounts,” he says. “Let me give you two examples: Let’s say that you hear that your grandfather earned only $10,000 a year 40 years ago, and you are earning -- I don’t know -- $40,000 or $50,000 today.

“You might think, ‘Well, gee. I’m earning much more than my grandfather; he only earned $10,000.’

“But think about the fact that prices were a lot lower back 40 or 50 years ago when you grandfather had that $10,000,” says Dr. Walden, an economist with North Carolina Cooperative Extension. “Fiscal illusion would be being fooled into thinking $10,000 is like $10,000 today. It’s not.

“Or another example is when we are looking at big dollar amounts -- particularly governmental budgets,” he adds. “Let’s say the federal budget deficit: $400 billion a year. That’s certainly a big number, and people like to say how large it is and how significant it is.

“But you have to put that in the context of the economy. And when you do put it in the context of the economy it amounts to about 3.5% of our entire economy.

“So that’s another example of not being fooled by dollar amounts.”