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Finance
Inflation Calculator
Purchasing power loss over time
Runs locally in your browser
Parameters
Results
- Real value
- $7,441
- Loss in purchasing power
- $2,559
How it works
Shows how inflation erodes the purchasing power of a dollar amount over time.
Who it's for: Retirees planning withdrawals, salary negotiators, and anyone asking whether today's savings will still buy the same goods in 10 or 20 years.
Discounts a future dollar amount back to today's real value using a constant annual inflation rate.
Reports Real value — what your money would be worth in today's dollars — and Loss in purchasing power.
Uses compound inflation: each year's prices build on the previous year.
How to use
- Enter Amount today — the dollar figure you want to evaluate (e.g., $10,000 in savings).
- Set the Inflation rate as an annual percentage (3% is a common long-term US planning assumption).
- Enter Years — how far into the future you are looking.
- Read Real value to see equivalent buying power in today's dollars.
- Review Loss in purchasing power to quantify how much value inflation consumes.
- Try different rates (2% vs. 4%) to bracket optimistic and pessimistic scenarios.
Good to know
- CPI inflation differs from your personal basket — healthcare and tuition often rise faster than the headline rate.
- Nominal investment returns must exceed inflation to grow real wealth.