Welcome to Nerd Wallets Smart Money podcast. I'm Sean Piles. And I'm Anna Hill Hoski, and this is our weekly personal finance news roundup, where we take a look at recent developments in the world of money and then go in depth on an issue that's important to your life and your bottom line. Today we're looking at what it costs to rent versus buy the place you live in.

There are a lot of factors that go into that decision, but the home buying market is so bonkers

these days that the math is very different from what it was even a year ago.

We'll have an expert from Zillow here to explain.

But first, a few money headlines from the last few days.

So, Sean, in our very first episode of money news, we did a long segment about the UAW strike

against the three major U.S. automakers.

That was back in early September.

Now it's November, and it looks like there's a tentative agreement

that could end the strike. Yes, in the last week or so, we saw both Ford Motor and Stalantis

reached tentative agreements, and now General Motors looks like it's got a deal. Union workers

will reportedly get a 25% pay hike over the next four and a half years, assuming they ratify the contract.

That would raise the top wage from $32 an hour to more than $40 an hour, or about $84,000 a

year for a 40-hour work week.

So as you said, union membership still has to ratify the contracts.

But one knock-on effect of all this is that auto workers

at other non-union companies, Tesla, Honda, any car companies with plants in the U.S.

could say, hey, wait a minute, I want that too.

We've been talking about this for a few weeks now, but there's another proof point to the discussion about inflation.

Last week, the Commerce Department reported that the gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 4.9% in the third quarter.

That's July to September.

It's preliminary data, so it might change, but that's a pretty good clip and reflects increases in consumer spending,

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