
The Economy According To Mint - bd
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/30/the-economy-according-to-mint/
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vaksel
if their average user spends $4,000 a month(before savings etc), wouldn't this
mean that this data is pretty much useless? I mean sure it might help you
identify some middle class families trends but thats about it

Based on that data an average minter makes at least $4,100 x 12 * 1.33(to
account for taxes) = $65,436...and thats specific spending, who knows what %
of their income gets saved or invested.

So thats the 10% or so of the population who are well off, what about all
those people making less than 70-80K?

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sangaya
The data is likely limited in scope by more than just income. For instance,
its a web-based startup. This means that users of it are more likely to be
tech savvy. It also means that the users are younger, which gives the baby
boomers a weaker representation.

Mint is also a money management site, so by it's very nature it's users are
interested in properly managing their money. People who care about proper
money management are probably doing a better job of making/saving/investing
it.

My life experience is limited (I'm only 24) but from it I can say with
confidence that the majority of people in my community, family, school, etc
are not tech savvy, don't worry about managing money, and frankly most still
believe that if you can't buy the software at bestbuy or walmart it's not made
by a reputable company.

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jerf
Yes, this struck me as a classic example of how you can't just say "Look, I
have a huge sample, so it's statistically valid!" (1% is a huge sample by
statistical standards at this scale... or it would be if it were properly
random.) The bias in the data is strong and pervasive.

Having such a huge sample means that the data does at least mean _something_.
It does indeed tell us something about the habits of those likely to sign up
for that service, after all. It's just that converting that to the universal
data we're all really interested in is non-trivial, and if the bias is strong
enough, basically impossible if the projection of the noise dominates the
signal.

(In other news, this article worked. I'm seriously considering signing up. :)
Informative marketing, the best kind.)

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jacoblyles
I wonder if they took into account normal seasonal variation in their data.
From the looks of it, they didn't.

It's mighty hard to draw conclusions from one year's worth of data. We see
consumer spending spiking again in December. Is it Christmas (.com), or is it
a recovery?

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marketer
I completely agree. They claim this is a 'quantitative' analysis, but it's
really anecdotally describing a graph. They should have removed seasonal
variations, used a larger data set, and tried a couple time series models.
Maybe in a couple years, when they actually have more data, it will be more
meaningful.

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BFalkner
It mentions that "the WSJ used our empirical data on bank fees to identify the
worst banking offenders" but no link to an article and I'm coming up short
with Google. Has anybody seen this?

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jderick
~300$/mo for a financial advisor?

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jupiter
This is very insightful and because it's real life data (as opposed to data
gathered/guessed/invented by agencies) it has authenticity. Patzer should be
official advisor to the government.

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iron_ball
By 'agencies' I assume you mean government agencies; and by
"gathered/guessed/invented" I assume you mean government agencies are wildly
inaccurate. Citation needed.

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socmoth
this is the best techcrunch article posted in ages. (we've had a negative
trend, just giving credit where it is due, even if it is just a guest
article.)

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lionhearted
Anyone have numbers for revenue or projected lifetime value of a customer for
Mint? It looks like they've raised over $19m in venture capital and I like
what they do - I'd be curious how they're doing on money.

