Inflation Calculator

A dollar today buys less than a dollar bought a decade ago, and it will buy less still a decade from now. Inflation is the general rise in prices over time — and while any single year's rate is small, compounded over years or decades it meaningfully changes what a given amount of money is actually worth.

This works in both directions. Projecting forward (a past amount into today's dollars, or today's amount into future dollars) shows what that amount would need to grow to in order to buy the same goods and services. The same formula run in reverse — a smaller number of years, or comparing backward — shows the equivalent in earlier dollars.

Actual year-by-year inflation isn't constant — some years run hot, others are flat or even negative, and rates vary significantly by country and time period. Rather than hardcode a specific historical dataset that would need constant updating to stay accurate, this calculator uses a rate you choose, defaulting to 3% — a commonly cited long-run average for US inflation, but an assumption, not an official figure. Adjust it to match the specific period or region you're estimating for.

Money sitting in a low-yield account or under a mattress doesn't shrink in nominal terms — the number on the balance stays the same. But its purchasing power shrinks every year inflation is positive and the money isn't earning a return that keeps pace. This is the core argument for keeping long-term savings invested rather than purely in cash: an investment return below the inflation rate is a real loss of purchasing power, even if the account balance is technically growing.

$10,000 in 2015, projected forward 11 years to 2026 at an assumed 3% annual inflation rate, would need to be roughly $13,842 in 2026 to have the same purchasing power — a cumulative increase of about 38%. Put another way, every $1 from 2015 has the buying power of roughly $0.72 in 2026 dollars under this assumption.