High school project idea · Money & Financial Systems
Build a personal price index and see why the headline inflation number may not feel like your actual life.
Track a consistent basket of real goods or services and compare personal price change with official inflation measures without generalizing too far.
Why this project matters
Track a consistent basket of real goods or services and compare personal price change with official inflation measures without generalizing too far. This project feels different from a school assignment because the student serves students and families curious about changing local prices, creates something visible, tests it honestly, responds to feedback, and explains the decisions behind the final result.
What you will create
Use these deliverables as milestones for Track Inflation in Your Own Life. Adapt the details to your interests, available time, and real-world opportunities.
Research basket definition, quantity and quality consistency, substitutions, sale prices, location, weights, official CPI categories, sample bias, and time period. Document the needs, constraints, credible sources, and perspectives of students and families curious about changing local prices.
Turn the evidence into a focused plan for the personal inflation index and economic explainer, including success criteria, ethical boundaries, scope, and a realistic path to completion.
Create the first complete version of the personal inflation index and economic explainer. Include a basket methodology, price collection protocol, dataset, weighted index, official-data comparison, visual story, limitations, and household implications.
repeat price collection across several periods, have another person reproduce part of the index, and test alternative basket weights Record what happened, what failed, what users or reviewers said, and which changes you made.
Publish the final personal inflation index and economic explainer with a portfolio-ready case study showing the challenge, evidence, process, revisions, results, limits, and next version.
Make the work stronger
For Track Inflation in Your Own Life, use these checkpoints to protect the quality of the work without turning the project into a performance for admissions.
Skills you can build
College application value
Can demonstrate initiative, curiosity, reflection, and growth through the student’s choices, response to setbacks, work with students and families curious about changing local prices, and development of Index Construction, Price Research, and Economic Interpretation.
The goal of Track Inflation in Your Own Life is not to manufacture an impressive activity. Do real work, keep evidence of the process, and reflect honestly on what changed.
Related college majors
Use Track Inflation in Your Own Life as a clue, then open a related major guide to compare coursework, career directions, reality checks, and other ways to test the field.
Study how people and institutions make choices under constraints, then test those explanations with models and data.
Understand how organizations operate across markets, cultures, and borders.
Explore patterns, structures, proofs, and models with precision.
Track Inflation in Your Own Life is an original Compass educational starting point designed around real work, visible evidence, feedback, and reflection. It is not an admissions guarantee.