Joshua Thompson
Founder — student, builder, and independent researcher
- · Curiosity — economics should be something anyone can explore, not a subject reserved for specialists.
- · Public service — this project exists to help the community, not to sell anything.
- · Transparency — every figure ships with its source, method, and confidence.
- · Education — the goal is understanding, not just data.
Biography
Joshua Thompson is a high school junior at Junius H. Rose High School whose interest in economics grew in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic. Watching prices climb, hidden fees appear in more and more places, and families around him quietly adjust their lives to a changing cost of living, he began asking why the economy felt so different in real life than it did on the news. Official inflation numbers described a national average, but the people he knew were living through very personal, very specific increases — in groceries, rent, insurance, subscriptions, and the small everyday costs that rarely make headlines. TALLY Insights began as his attempt to build the tool he wished existed: something that could translate national economic trends into the language of ordinary life.
"I created TALLY Insights because I wanted a way to understand what was happening to the cost of everyday life around me, and I realized many others were asking the same questions. Prices were changing, hidden costs were appearing everywhere, and the economy felt increasingly difficult to understand on a personal level. I couldn't find a tool that explained these changes in a way that felt relevant to ordinary people, so I decided to build one. My hope is that TALLY helps people better understand their own experiences, ask better questions, and feel more informed about the economic forces shaping their lives."
A short timeline
- 2022Begins tracking family and neighborhood prices after noticing post-pandemic changes in the cost of everyday goods.
- 2023Starts a personal spreadsheet comparing local grocery, gas, and subscription prices against reported national averages.
- 2024Sketches the first version of TALLY Insights as a way to translate national inflation statistics into accessible, everyday language.
- 2025Begins building TALLY Insights as an independent, free public resource for understanding the real cost of everyday life.
- 2026Opens TALLY Insights to the wider public as an ongoing educational initiative.