Inflation is a slow leak in the value of every dollar you hold. Enter an amount, a rate, and a number of years, and this calculator shows what that money will actually buy when the time comes.
The math divides your amount by the inflation rate compounded once per year. At 3 percent inflation, prices double roughly every 24 years, which means a dollar loses about half its buying power over that stretch.
This is why cash savings alone rarely build wealth. Money earning less than the inflation rate is losing ground every year even though the account balance never goes down. The goal is to keep long term money in assets that historically outpace inflation.
The Federal Reserve targets 2 percent, and the long run United States average is close to 3 percent. Recent years have shown it can run much hotter, so testing 4 or 5 percent is a useful stress test.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the Consumer Price Index each month, tracking the cost of a broad basket of goods and services. Our live data pages chart it directly from the BLS feed.
Common tools include stocks for long horizons, Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, Series I savings bonds, and simply keeping cash in accounts that pay a competitive yield rather than near zero.
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