The methodology behind doxoINSIGHTS Household Bill Pay Metrics
doxoINSIGHTS is designed to provide the best possible look into the average American household’s monthly bills, and relies on anonymized data from its 10 Million customers paying more than 120,000 billers. doxo’s vast amount of data gives a uniquely accurate perspective into what households are actually paying for their bills, and provides a sound basis for constructing an accurate gauge of relative differences in the cost of the most common monthly bills across America.
doxo tracks payments to 45 different biller categories, and doxoINSIGHTS highlights the thirteen most common: Gas, Electric, Water & Sewer, Waste & Recycling, Cable & Internet, Mobile Phone, Auto Loans, Auto Insurance, Life Insurance, Health Insurance, Alarm & Security, Rent, and Mortgage. All data is anonymized and aggregated prior to analysis in order to protect doxo users’ privacy.
(Note: doxoINSIGHTS data for Rent and Mortgage comes via the Census Bureau’s data. All eleven other categories come from doxo’s anonymized data of over 10M users.)
doxoINSIGHTS offers a unique view into America’s cost of bills that hasn’t been available before:
- The extremely large sample of over 10M payers gives a more accurate view than error-prone surveys, which have size, bias and accuracy issues.
- With 6x more payable billers than any other network and 45 different bill categories, doxo tracks a much larger set of biller payments.
- doxo data also includes the percentage of households that pay certain bill types, which is important for some bill types such as Alarm & Security, where not all households choose that service.
- doxo sees what users actually pay, so it’s a more accurate view into the median cost to households.
doxo’s economic and demographic data on its 10 million paying users matches closely with US household distributions resulting in a large and highly accurate sample.
- Statistically significant, with over 10 million paying consumers
- Geographically diverse, capturing payment activity in 37,000+ zip codes
- Economically representative, with participation from all income brackets
- Covering 45 different biller service categories, with more than 120,000 unique billers
- Capturing all payment funding sources, including bank accounts, credit cards, and debit cards.
doxoINSIGHTS data represents the bottom line of what people actually pay, not published rates or industry averages. The data is presented at the national, county and city level also includes comparison to the US Census Bureau household income data. For each, the following views are provided:
- The combined median monthly and yearly cost of the thirteen most common bills and how these compare to the national average
- A breakdown of each of the thirteen most common bills, including the percentage of households who pay each, the median paid per month as it compares to the national median and the top billers in each area
- Rank as it relates to cost of living at the national or state level
In addition to the above, doxo’s Cost of Bills Index (COBI) is integrated into the experience for each state, county and city. COBI measures regional differences in the median cost of the ten most common household bills, helping to illustrate the relative cost of living across the US. The number 100 represents the national median, and each state, county and city are then assigned a number, either above or below 100, based on how they compare to the national median. More details on COBI can be found here.