Any experience with public household budget survey?

Life Hacking
1

Did anyone previously participate in the public (BFS) household budget survey?

Is it a lot of work or detail, assuming you already track your finances? Is it interesting to go through the survey?

Apparently, participation is of greatest importance and gets rewarded with 100 CHF :smiley:

2

Sounds like the kind of thing I’d participate in just for the fun of it and without getting paid :smile: it’s strange that they don’t seem to mention the amount of time the participation usually takes or go into more detail regarding data collection
 did you get more specific information as a potential participant?

3

It seems they’ll brief you over phone. What I’ve seen is an introduction letter, a flyer and a return envelope.

It does sound interesting. But it’s probably the kind of survey where you need to provide a ton of personal information in a given format. Seems legit enough, but you never know when you get this kind of letter, stating “you’ve been randomly chosen, please give us your private data”. :wink:

So that’s another question, if anyone got this or other surveys from BFS? I remember seeing one a while back focused more on health topics, but didn’t participate. Legit, indeed?

4

250 households per month (in a population of almost 9 million) does not leave a lot of room for other forum members to be selected. Legit, as per the link you included.

5

Agree, seems ligit.
You can always check the return envelope’s address if you want peace of mind :blush:

6

I did it two years ago. It’s a lot of work, even if you track your finances because you have to fill everything manually in their paper-based documentation (at least that was the case at the time). They are interested only in specific categories; you have to group your purchases under specific chapters; you have to fill in the quantities of what you purchase, for whom you are buying them, etc,

I did receive the 100 CHF voucher, and I don’t think I’ve even used it. :rofl:

I would not do it again; too much hassle.

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7

Interesting. In their statistics, they have 100s of categories, for example 9 different ones for wine.
That’d be indeed be much more work than booking your weekly shopping bill lump sum to “food etc.” :smiley:

Seems they send a mock survey upfront, still in paper. Let’s see how that looks.

The guy on the phone said you’d also get a dedicated analysis on your responses.

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8

I did in 2020 (checking on my files!). I don’t remember the result of the analysis, except that it didn’t exactly bring any new light. The survey asked for one month of data + exceptional expenses for the last three months. If I remember correctly, you can deduce nothing from it. It is just a snapshot, maybe useful for statistics, but not as an insight.

Now, I don’t want to discourage you, it’s probably useful for the country at a national level, but not really on the personal level :upside_down_face:

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9

Fair enough. I already know my income and expenses in general, and don’t care too much how they compare too others.

I’m more curious about how the study is conducted and results presented. In the media, I’ve only seen very high-level summaries. If I understand correctly, it’s not just the budget comparison itself, but also impact the consumer price index or it’s basket.

Just mentioning the conditions for participants as known so far.
If I participate, I can share in a few months if people are interested.

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