Inflation Calculator

How this calculator works

Inflation quietly shrinks what money can buy over time, even while the number in your account stays the same or grows. This calculator applies a steady annual inflation rate to an amount over a number of years, showing its real (inflation-adjusted) value — what that amount would actually be able to buy, in today's terms.

Why this matters for long-term planning

A retirement number that sounds comfortable today can quietly fall short decades from now, because prices rise every year even in ordinary times. When you run the Retirement Calculator or Savings Goal Calculator, it's worth also running this one on the same time horizon — it shows how much of that future number is real growth, and how much is just inflation keeping pace.

Choosing a rate

Inflation varies year to year and is impossible to predict precisely. A commonly used long-run planning assumption is around 2–3% annually, matching many central banks' long-term targets — but actual inflation has run both well below and well above that range in different periods. Try a couple of different rates to see a realistic range rather than trusting a single number.

The other direction: what did the past cost?

The same math works in reverse — enter a past amount and it shows what that amount is equivalent to today, which is often a more intuitive way to feel the effect (“that $20{,}000 salary in 1995 is like earning about $X today”) than reasoning about percentages alone.