In our home, we have a small problem. We would much rather have great ingredients for fabulous food and spend a few more dollars on making our place look great than entertainment or shopping sprees. With that in mind, we were totally curious to see what other people in our area were spending their hard earned cash on.
Over at Bundle.com you can plug in your city and state and it will bring up the monthly expenditures for your surrounding areas. We flipped through a few major cites across the country and the totals varied quite a bit.
Though some might find it creepy to spy on our neighbors spending habits, we actually think it's a natural step in wanting to get ahead and be on top of money in your pocket and in your area. Even if you're not into checking into how much moolah your neighbors are spending on eating out when they should be fixing up their front yards, we do think it might be a helpful resource for those looking to move into a new area.
Here's a short insight to how they work:
The most recent month we could pull up was October, but that's still only a short delay in time if you're truly trying to get a sense for cost of living in a new space. Sure you can check Craigslist to see what Apartments and Housing list at, but will you really know that your cost of groceries might double upon moving somewhere new? It could be an interesting idea to keep an eye on going forward!
(via: The Consumerist)
(Image: Bundle)
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Comments (9)
Just gave it a try. It's funny there is not a bubble for mortgage. For a typical family with kids in San Diego. I would think that's the biggest part of many families' spending.
Not a bubble for rent and in cities like San Francisco unless you have lived in a rent control apartment for more than ten years its the biggest chunk of change.
The Food bubble made me feel better because I always feel like I spend too much on food but you pay more for organic, local sustainable foods and I don't shop at Safeway or package foods from Trader Joes.
Yeah how do we know what the rent/mortgage is cause that feels really crucial.
And I was a little confused about the getting around vs travel. Cause Travel says it includes mass transit and getting around doesn't but hey not all of us own cars. (Yes really.) But it does make me feel better about my decision to dump my car :)
Something is not right. The site says people in my area (small town) are spending $12,000 a month before mortgage/rent? There is no way that's true. Where is the info coming from?
I think mint.com is a much better and secure way to compare your monthly spending habits to the others in your area. It helps you see what categories of things you're spending money on and ways you can save. Highly recommended :)
i don't see how this makes sense. adjusting the income bracket and updating the information returns spending amounts that are just shy of the total income bracket ... where is the money for rent/mortgage?
I don't get it... these are average monthly expenses? Who spends 900 a month on shopping???
Bundle is cool but you have to keep in mind that they use average and not median. Most numbers you are used to seeing are median numbers. This is because averages get super skewed. If you go deeper into the details it will also give you the percentile numbers. This is more revealing since you will see, for example that in Seattle although the average spent monthly on general shopping is 623 the 50th percentile (the middle) only spends 270. The 70th, though, spends more than twice that at 634 and the 90th spends TWICE that at 1347.
So because spending is so lop sided, and they use averages, the numbers feel very high to most of us mortal s till you look into the details. The more an area has a big income gap, like Seattle, the crazier the averages get.
Bundles ays about there data "With a team of experienced statisticians and data junkies, we’ve compiled, tagged and sorted data from a (still-expanding) collection of sources. Our data comes from the U.S. government, from anonymous and aggregated spending transactions from Citi, and from third party data providers. We are always looking for new data sources that could benefit people. If you know of any that our users may find helpful, feel free to share them on our site or send the data source to data@bundle.com." So basically they use census data combined with credit/debit transactions to get more of a picture about how incomes are spent. The reason they have no housing costs is that most people don't pay their mortgages in a way they can currently track. Supposedly that is going to be changing. Their Dataset will also improve as they acquire more sources.
Big cities vary greatly depending on zip code too. Might be nice to compare my neighborhood with another. After touring the sight a bit, I leave with a "so what?" feeling....