Inflation Calculator

At 3% annual inflation, $100,000 today has the purchasing power of roughly $74,400 in 10 years — a 25.6% loss. Over 20 years you lose over 45% of purchasing power. The effect compounds: higher inflation or longer timeframes erode value faster. Use this calculator with your amount, years, and assumed inflation rate to see the adjusted value.

At 3% annual inflation, $100,000 today will have the purchasing power of about $74,400 in 10 years. At 4% it would be roughly $67,600. The formula is: Adjusted Value = Amount ÷ (1 + rate)^years. Enter your amount, start and end years, and inflation rate in the calculator for a precise result and year-by-year breakdown.

Purchasing power falls when prices rise. Forward: divide your amount by (1 + inflation rate)^years to get future equivalent purchasing power. Backward: multiply by (1 + rate)^years to see what a past amount would be worth today. This calculator does both and shows a year-by-year table. Use the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI for historical accuracy.

To express a past amount in today's dollars, use the backward (historical) mode: enter the past amount, start year, end year (e.g. today), and average annual inflation rate. For example, $50,000 in 1990 at 2.5% average inflation is roughly $95,000 in today's dollars. The calculator shows the equivalent value and a year-by-year breakdown.

Inflation reduces what your savings can buy. At 3% inflation, $1,000,000 in 30 years has the purchasing power of about $412,000 today. Retirement calculators should use inflation-adjusted (real) returns and show income in today's dollars. Use this tool to see how much future expenses or target savings are worth in today's terms, then plan contributions accordingly.

At 3% annual inflation for 10 years, prices rise about 34.4%. That means $100,000 of buying power today is equivalent to about $74,400 in today-dollar terms after 10 years. In other words, purchasing power declines by roughly $25,600 over the decade.

At 6% inflation, purchasing power drops much faster than many people expect. Using the Rule of 72, buying power halves in about 12 years at that rate. A budget that costs $4,000 per month today would need roughly $8,000 per month after about 12 years to keep the same lifestyle.

To preserve purchasing power against 4% inflation, you need a nominal return above 4%. A 6% nominal return is only about 1.9% real return after inflation using the Fisher approximation. On $200,000, that is roughly $3,800 of real growth in the first year.

Your nominal pay raise should at least match inflation to keep real income flat. If inflation is 3.5%, a $70,000 salary would need to become about $72,450 next year just to maintain purchasing power. Any raise below that level is a real pay cut in inflation-adjusted terms.

At 3% annual inflation for 20 years, prices rise about 81%. $50,000 today has the purchasing power of about $27,700 in today-dollar terms after 20 years. You would need about $90,300 in 20 years to buy what $50,000 buys today.

Inflation hurts savers when their money sits in low-yield accounts (e.g., 0.5% savings) while inflation runs 4–6%. At 5% inflation, cash loses half its purchasing power in about 14 years. High-yield savings or I-bonds can partly offset this; stocks historically outpace inflation long term.