The Wallet: Statistics vs. Reality, Why Official Figures Don't Resemble Your Life

TL;DR

Official statistics like inflation and average salaries often don't align with people's daily experiences because national averages oversimplify diverse realities.
The problem lies in the heterogeneity of consumer economics, where each household has unique consumption patterns and contexts.
Statistical averages are useful for macroeconomics but are poor indicators of individual realities, akin to saying the average family has 2.3 children.
The Dane's inflation calculation uses a weighted basket of goods and services representing average spending, which may not reflect individual household spending proportions.
The national average salary in Colombia is around 4.5 million pesos, but the median income is much lower and more representative of most people's earnings.
The Dane's methodology for inflation includes 443 products grouped into 12 categories with distinct weights, which may not align with essential spending for every household.
Individuals are advised to create their own personal inflation index by tracking their top 10-15 expenses and calculating their percentage of the total budget.
It is also recommended to look for median statistics in labor data and use tools that compare income by distributions and percentiles, not just averages.

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