If you are a data geek, you will love this interactive tool/data visualization from Flowing Data (be sure to click on the link to take advantage of the interactive nature of the tool):

Let me provide some context for what you are looking at. Here are the data sources:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (using data collected by the Census Bureau) estimates spending patterns over time and across demographics, through the Consumer Expenditure Survey. BLS released midyear estimates today. Spending on food, housing, and healthcare is up from the same time period last year. Spending on clothes, personal insurance, and everything else is down.

The panel at the top allows you to toggle between Year, Income strata OR Household composition (can’t do both as I discovered), which gives you lots of combinations to analyze. Rather than methodically plow through over 100+ permutations (who would possibly want to do that?), I came up with 7 different scenarios in this spreadsheet for your students to select from which involve having them compare one group to another group that is only one variable different from the other:

Stay with me, you have made it this far. Scenario #1 compares the spending habits for the upper income strata (highest 20%) in 2013 compared to 1985. Presumably this is a composite of all household compositions (single, married, single parent…). Note that the only difference between the two groups is highlighted in yellow (in this case, the year).

You could then have students note their observations in comparing the two groups with a focus on the biggest differences. Here are a few things I noticed from scenario #1 (BIG Tip: When you roll the cursor over the cost category, you get the $ amount and the percentage of total costs; very helpful as it can be difficult to sense major differences!):

• Housing costs go from 28% of total spending in 1985 to 31% in 2013 (remember the big tip as you can get this percentage data by toggling over the category)
• Transportation declined from 19% of total spend in 1985 to 17% in 2013
• Healthcare costs went from 3% of total spend in 1985 to 6% in 2013 with most of that increase coming in health insurance. Now you know why you hear so much about the rising costs of health insurance.  It takes a larger percentage of consumers’ wallets today.
• Level of cash contributions (presumably to charity) have dropped from 5% to 4% over this time period.

I created a second tab on the spreadsheet so students could enter the percentages of the major cost categories from the visualization to analyze the differences between the two groups. Might be good for a two person activity as one person reads the figures from the chart and the other enters the information in the spreadsheet. Look for a more structured NGPF Interactive using this resource in the future. In the meantime, if you have any additional ideas on how you might use this in the classroom, please let us know.

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Interesting in letting your students create a post-education budget so they can learn what the costs of living really are? Check out our most popular activity: Create A Salary Based Budget. You might even have your students compare their final budget with data from this interactive for a single person.

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.