Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Well, there are really two options. First of all, you can simply track how you're doing against yourself. So you look at your income last year, you look at your income two years ago, you compare that to your income today. Now, very importantly, when you do this, you have to take out inflation. So just real quickly, if you saw that your income went up 5 percent over last year but recognize inflation is running about 5 percent, then you really are simply treading water. The other way you can do it is to compare yourself to other people - the so-called keeping up with the Joneses approach. And this approach says that rather than simply saying, well, if your income after inflation has gone up, that means you are getting better off. What you would want to do is say, 'Well, yeah, my income has gone up, but how much has the income of other people gone up?' And if their income has gone up more, then I'm actually worse off. So what this does is put you in the sense of making relative comparisons. You're not comparing you against yourself, you're comparing yourself against other people. And the fact is that everyone's standard of living could be going up, but if yours is going up at a slower rate, you may very well feel worse off."