For instance, what if I said fast food sales normally increase in Q2? Think about this. Maybe its just an annual trend. It is getting warmer and people are on the go spending more time outside and want quick food?

What I would need to see for this to have some relevancy to the economy is year over year sales, or the % increase in this year over last year for comparable sales. In this case comparable would be mint.com users who have used the site for over a year. This is how chain restaurants, retailers, etc. look at their sales.

For instance Burger King just released that they are having the worst year since 2006 and down ~3% to last year. Here you would think they shuttering McDs left and right.

…while I do think the graphics is very USA-Today-like; it’s not nearly as insightful in terms of consumer purchasing patterns. (I tend to agree with Jeff’s statements below)

I would have figured folks with less disposable income might be more thoughtfully restrained; and folks with highly leveraged financials might lean towards more credit card purchases.

For the restaurant owners out there; you would think in a down economy, it may be a good time to carefully re-evaluating the lower cost dollar menu or focus more on the appetizers menu.

While that might be great for these companies, I don’t think it’s great for the people using credit cards (at insane interest rates) to purchase fast food. This is bad.