Consumer & Household Finance
Spending, saving, debt, and financial fragility — how American households earn, borrow, and manage money.
9 pieces
BlogNewThe Complaint Machine
16.7 million CFPB complaints: the cleanest natural experiment in consumer finance, and a database that one product category swallowed whole.
BlogNewThe Fed Hiked. Your Credit Card Noticed.
Fourteen years of CFPB complaints show monetary policy reaching households through exactly one door: credit-card complaints triple after the 2022 hikes while mortgage complaints never move.
BlogNewThe January Echo
Amazon's musical-instrument reviews peak in January, not December — the sound of a million gifts being unboxed. Seasonality cleanly separates the instruments people give from the gear working musicians buy.
BlogFeeling Rich Is Not the Same as Being Rich
Across 147 countries, money reliably buys the feeling of financial sufficiency — and the feeling never tops out, across countries or within them. But whole regions feel far richer, or poorer, than their income says they should.
BlogThe Peak and the Plateau — A Decade of American Financial Well-Being
For a decade, Americans felt steadily better about their money. Then 2022 took it back — and the recovery never came.
Zillow state ZHVI panel
Wide state-level Zillow Home Value Index panel with monthly columns from 2000 through 2026.
Colorado legalization housing counterfactual
Monthly Zillow-style housing value panel with a Colorado legalization period flag and state-level comparison series.
TeachingCFPB Crisis Monitor
Use public consumer complaints as a crisis early-warning system: pin incident spikes, inspect consented narratives, and separate product mix shifts from real operational improvement.
BlogDoing Okay: American Financial Wellbeing
Follow a decade of Federal Reserve SHED survey indicators: financial comfort, inflation-era strain, emergency savings, $400 expense readiness, and education gaps.