Never Retire - Your Input Requested

On something different

When I was in college, I conducted a fair bit of research.

Because I didn’t have a budget for my research until graduate school, I had to put in serious work to develop something resembling a reliable sample for the questions I was trying to answer. So I stood on busy street corners and methodically used what researchers call a skip interval (stop every ‘nth person) to deliver my survey.

The rudimentary approach worked. I got two peer-reviewed academic publications out of it. You can see the abstracts here and here.

Anyhow, I never expected to be making this post, but I have had an idea for some money-related research for some time.

This might come off as weird, which is, in part, why I’m asking for your input.

I have always taken interest in the ATM receipts you see laying on the ground around banks, particularly ones with busy ATM machines.

I feel like they can tell you at least a little something about personal finance situations—at least in the aggregate. I wonder if you’d see significant variation in withdrawal amounts and balances on the basis of where the ATM is located, just as my previous research showed significant differences in sense of community and body mass index on the basis of neighborhood.

Anyhow, it’s probably obvious.

I want to come up with a plan to collect ATM receipts, aggregate them, and try to come to some loose conclusions based on the data. In these situations, you never know what you’ll find. In fact, you often stumble upon findings that never crossed your mind.

Given that the people who produced the receipts maintain their anonymity, I don’t see anything unethical about this.

At the same time, I haven’t mentioned this idea to anybody yet. Literally no one.

I haven’t even run it by my girlfriend, whose reaction I look forward to receiving.

So I fully recognize I could be missing something. Something beyond the obvious limitations of this type of research approach.

I welcome your thoughts.

Rocco