Inflation Calculator
Calculate the future purchasing power of money given an assumed inflation rate, or its equivalent value in the past.
At 3%/yr inflation, $10,000.00 needs to grow to $13,439.16 just to buy the same things in year 10 — tap a bar to see any year along the way.
About the Inflation Calculator
A dollar figure by itself doesn't mean much across time — $10,000 today buys a very different basket of goods than $10,000 did twenty years ago, and will buy a different one again twenty years from now. Inflation erodes purchasing power steadily, which is easy to state as a fact and easy to underestimate as a number, since the effect compounds year over year rather than adding up in a straight line.
This calculator projects that erosion (or growth, run in reverse) in either direction: what a sum today will effectively be worth in the future given an assumed inflation rate, or what a past amount would be worth in today's purchasing power.
It's used for things like adjusting an old salary or price for comparison to today, sanity-checking whether a fixed pension or savings goal will keep pace with rising costs, or just building intuition for how much a given inflation rate actually matters over a decade or more.
The amounts and timeframes you enter stay on your device and are never transmitted anywhere.
Frequently asked questions
What's a realistic inflation rate to assume for a long-term projection?
Historical average inflation has generally run in the low single digits annually over long stretches in most developed economies, though it varies notably by period and country. Running the same projection at a couple of different rates gives a more honest range than trusting one assumed number.
What's the difference between this and a CPI-based inflation calculator?
A calculator built on actual historical CPI (Consumer Price Index) data reflects what inflation genuinely was in specific past years. This one instead projects forward or backward using one constant assumed rate you choose, which is useful for planning but isn't a historical record.
How does this relate to the interest or compound interest calculators on this site?
The underlying math is identical to compound growth — inflation compounds the cost of things the same way interest compounds a balance. The difference is just framing: one shrinks purchasing power, the other grows an account balance.
Should I use this to figure out if my savings are keeping up with inflation?
It's a reasonable way to get a feel for it — project your savings goal forward at your expected investment return, and separately project today's cost of living forward at your assumed inflation rate, then compare the two.
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