Pacific Northwest-Coast Bias

Pacific Northwest-Coast Bias had a great year. But what articles did readers enjoy the most?

5.  Redmond is the most expensive Washington city to live in – Were you like me and thought Bellevue was the most expensive city in Washington?

4. US Debt-to-GDP Ratio- Deservedly, the US got downgraded from AAA debt in 2011. Not surprisingly, Switzerland and Germany are on the list of AAA, but I was quite surprised that the UK was still among the top-rated countries, along with Hong Kong and Norway. Interestingly, the US is one of the few countries with a Debt-to-GDP ratio below 100%. I was quite surprised by The Netherlands and Norway above 400%. It’s clear that the path to solvency is getting the US budget back on track. With the current leadership on both sides, my confidence of this happening is very low.

3. NBA Arena in Bellevue – I don’t know precisely where the NBA might build an arena in Bellevue, but I have a couple ideas.

2. NFL Concussions – My magnum opus of 2011 was inspired by a head injury that I suffered myself, and realized that others were undergoing the same injury with no idea of the long-term implications. Although I wasn’t playing football, I hit my head and blacked out, going into seizures and needing to be revived by medical staff. I was woozy for days. At that time, much less was known about the diagnosis and treatment of concussions, so my recovery consisted of lying on the couch. Like NFL players, the only thing I can do is hope I won’t suffer any long-term impacts.

1. Who has the toughest college football schedule in 2011 – The top post in 2011 wasn’t without controversy. The SEC had the weakest schedule among top conferences, yet the got both spots in the Championship. Do I think they deserved it? No Way. Oklahoma State or Stanford definitely deserved that spot over Alabama. But I’ll be watching the game, and rooting for a playoff in future years.

From the Lufthansa in-flight magazine.

• When I rolled over my 401k two years ago, eTrade would not let me transfer the cents, thus I was stuck with $0.07 in my account
• I tried to cancel my account, but they would not let me, stating there was still value in the account ($0.07).
• Every quarter they pay the postage and printing necessary to send me a statement telling me I still have $0.07 invested with them.

I’m going to let them keep sending me these statements until they figure out how to run their business better.

Seattleites sure do love their caffeinated beverages. But I wondered, does Seattle really have more coffee shops than other cities?

To test this question, I used online maps to determine how many coffee shops were located downtown (1k feet per inch resolution). Seattle is the 23rd largest city in America according to Wikipedia, so to test its coffee shops, I compared it to #22, Boston, and #24, Washington DC. I wish I could have used Bing Maps, but they just don’t show the view I was looking for.

Seattle

Seattle has a TON of coffee shops. We’re not just talking Starbucks either. With the sale of the Seattle Supersonics to Oklahoma City by Howard Schultz, many Seattleites won’t step foot inside a Starbucks anymore. Tully’s, Pete’s, Fuel, and independent coffee shops, among others, take first place in Seattle resident’s hearts for best coffee shop. But how many shops are needed to serve its residents?

Answer: 131. For a coffee search in downtown Seattle, 131 shops show up, even with half the map taken up by Puget Sound

Boston

Boston is more known for (Dunkin) Donuts than coffee, but when I visited Boston earlier this year, there were still Starbucks across the street from each other. How many coffee shops are in the same footprint within Boston?

My count is 60. Less than half of Seattle’s.

Washington DC

Washington DC isn’t know for their coffee, but they do have 83 coffee shops in their downtown area. Not bad, but still about two-thirds of Seattle.

Overall, no surprise, Seattle really does have more coffee shops than other cities of similar size.

No, I’m not interested in a Free Pre-Paid Cremation. This company needs to work on their segmentation algorithm. They just wasted about $0.50 on the stamp/envelope/paper/printing.

Yesterday was a big day for the US’s credit rating, and not in a good way. Credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s downgraded the US from AAA, the highest rating, to AA+, the 2nd highest rating.

I wondered, what countries are still rated AAA, and what does their debt profile look like?

Not surprisingly, Switzerland and Germany are on the list, but I was quite surprised that the UK was still among the top-rated countries, along with Hong Kong and Norway. How does the US stack up against these countries?

Interestingly, the US is one of the few countries with a Debt-to-GDP ratio below 100%. I was quite surprised by The Netherlands and Norway above 400%.

It’s clear that both current debt-to-GDP ratio and the trajectory is important – I also looked at last year’s budget deficit for each country:

Now Norway’s credit rating makes more sense. While their in debt up to their eyeballs, they’re slowly chipping away at it, with a healthy 10% surplus each year. Meanwhile, the US is digging a hole, adding more than 10% to their debt each year.

It’s clear that the patch to solvency is getting the US budget back on track. With the current leadership on both sides, my confidence of this happening is very low.

Sears and I have not gotten along recently. It took 3 separate deliveries and 1 repair visit to get the washer and dryer working properly. The Kenmore grill had to be returned because it was faulty. When I got my patio furniture home, it was damaged and had to be returned.

But the Sears email recommendations are what annoy me the most. When I bought the patio furniture, here’s the email I got from Sears.

More patio furniture? Come on Sears.

I’m not expecting Amazon-style recommendations, but this is just pathetic. Don’t make 8 recommendations of different patio furniture sets when I just bought a patio set. What about a fire pit. Or a grill. Or anything other than patio furniture.

Sears, consider hiring a more seasoned Internet marketer.

At 9pm tonight, received an email from Lowe’s: Send an e-Gift Card to your dad for Father’s Day and have it arrive within 12 hours. Brilliant marketing!

Didn’t work on me though. My dad is getting a card and a call.

Following up on my last post using Mint.com data, I decided to look into living expenses by city. Mint breaks down living expenses for 12 cities in Washington. My guess was that Bellevue would be the most expensive to live in, and Spokane would be the cheapest.

Monthly expenses by city

Turns out that Redmond, not Bellevue, is the most expensive city in Washington. The average Redmond resident spends almost $97k per year. Redmond beat Bellevue by $16k per year, quite a large margin.

The least expensive city: Bellingham turned out to be the least expensive city, costing $33k per year. You could live in Bellingham for three years at the same cost of one year in Redmond.

What drives the cost of living decrease?

Mint only breaks out four spending categories (Travel, Food and Dining, Shopping, and Transportation), but we can use these to identify what drives up the cost of living in Redmond.

Redmond

Travel: $600

Food and Dining: $750

Shopping: $650

Transportation: $350

Bellingham

Travel: $375

Food and Dining: $600

Shopping: $425

Transportation: $250

Interestingly, the cost of food and dining is only marginally higher in Redmond. Food is about 25% more expensive in Redmond, while overall expenses are 3X that of Bellingham.

Transportation is the next closest category: Redmond costs are 40% higher than Bellingham.

But for more discretionary expenses, Redmond costs are much higher. Travel and Shopping are more than 50% higher in Redmond than Bellingham.

Takeaways:

Living in Redmond doesn’t have to be 3X the price of Bellingham. When looking at core expenses, it appears it’s about 25% more expensive to live in Redmond.

Higher incomes in Redmond drive up the cost of living due to discretionary purchases. Travel and shopping are mainly optional purchases, and the higher incomes in Redmond, and the higher incomes of residents of Redmond allow them to spend more in these areas.

I recently came across a site created by Mint.com that anonymizes and aggregates users spending behavior. Data.Mint.com allows the public to access its data on consumer spending habits in a searchable and sortable format.

I wondered, what sort of insights can one glean from this data? I have a list of some pretty interesting analyses to do, but I thought I’d start out with an easy question:

Which Bellevue Restaurant is the most popular.

“Most popular” is a pretty subjective superlative. But Mint’s data has a pretty non-subjective measure of popularity: # of unique visitors who have made a purchase at a particular location. That’s the criteria I used for this analysis.

Two restaurants came out on top of Mint.com’s visitor index: Las Margaritas and Sideline Sportsbar.

At first, I was quite surprised by the restaurants that topped the list. I thought for sure that some of the bigger-names in Bellevue would top the list over a couple of dive bars. Re-examining the criteria, cozy bars in high-traffic areas are exactly the type of restuarants that would have the highest unique visitor  traffic. Not surprisingly, Ooba Toobas is also high on the list.

Wild Ginger, the type of restaurant that I would hypothesize being at the top of the list, did rank in the top ten (8/10 on Mint.com’s index). Tap House Grill was among the top 4. But it’s clear that lower-cost bars are “more popular.”

Also: note that a lot of national chains and Seattle Restaurants aren’t on Mint’s list. I’m ok with that. I’d prefer to examine local restaurants anyway.

Which restaurants are least popular?

I’ve never been to Ebru Mediterranian Grill. Maybe it’s a gem of a restaurant that few have discovered. But it’s the lowest-ranked restaurant in Bellevue, a 2/10 on Mint.com’s index. Based on this, I’m not too interested in venturing out for a meal here.

Fortunately, I haven’t eaten at any of the restaurants near the bottom of the list. Maybe I have good taste. Or maybe “Halal Meats” just isn’t my thing.

If you’ve tried one of the least popular restaurants, leave a comment.

Which restaurants are most expensive?

This isn’t too hard to guess. Daniel’s Broiler tops the list at an average check size of $115. Seastar is second at $73.

Interestingly, the priciest restaurants all fell between 4-7 on Mint’s visitor index. Their steep price and lengthier dining experience keeps them from serving more customers.

Biases in the data

There are plenty of biases in Mint’s data that I accepted. The type of person that uses Mint doesn’t match the demographics of Bellevue. Mint users are Internet savvy and budget-conscious.  My guess is that Mint skews young, urban, and male. But, it’s still has a great dataset that I hope to explore more.