Things that will Change the World

Look for real time data to become the new buzzword.  After all, who can wait for weekly, monthly, or quarterly reports anymore?  To make split second decisions, you need split second data. 

Take for example consumer spending.  Since the dawn of time, Wall Street and Washington wonks anticipate the Commerce Department’s release of its Consumer Spending report. 

Here’s a blurb from Bloomberg Businessweek:

Consumers likely spent more in August and saw their incomes rise, but economists don't expect the gains to be enough to greatly alter the sluggish economy.

Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected the report would show consumer spending and incomes each rose 0.3 percent in August. The Commerce Department will release the new August report at 8:30 a.m. EDT Friday.

The gain in spending, which would follow a 0.4 percent rise in July, would indicate that consumers are spending at a moderate rate.

But what happens when the data that comes out of this report is already old the minute it’s released?  Well, mintdata makes that a reality.  Mint.com has quickly shot up to become the household financial management giant on the block.  It allows users to track their spending, set up budgets, and stream real time data from their bank and credit accounts. 

Now mintdata.com has begun displaying the aggregate trends.      In this example, mintdata shows who is spending money in Boston and what categories are growing and shrinking.

Click over to Average Purchase and you have a live data stream of inflation.

There’s some fun things to lookup too.  You can drill into a particular shop. Here’s a look at how well Morton’s Steakhouse is doing.  Looks like people are buying more steak (average purchase price is up) since earlier this year.

You can quickly see how this shreds any monthly or quarterly look at consumer spending. 

Sadly, Portland Maine isn’t on the list.  I was curious to see how much people spent at Market Street Eats.  Maybe next month.