The official CPI is a snapshot of a theoretical average household. Your inflation rate depends on how you actually spend money. If you spend heavily on housing, food, or healthcare, your real purchasing power erosion is almost certainly higher than the number on the news.
The Money GPS Personal Inflation Calculator weights actual price increases across your spending categories to show your true inflation rate, years to halve purchasing power, and which of your current assets are keeping up — and which are falling behind.
A single percentage — your real annual cost of living increase based on your actual spending weights, not a government composite.
The Rule of 70 applied to your rate. At 7% inflation your money halves in 10 years. This number makes the abstract concrete.
Housing, food, transport, healthcare, energy — see which spending categories are hitting you hardest and by how much.
The difference between the official CPI headline number and your personal rate — showing exactly how much the average measurement is undercounting your experience.
Are your savings account, bonds, or equity holdings keeping pace? The calculator flags which assets are ahead and which are silently losing ground.
A visual chart showing what today's dollar is worth 5, 10, 20, and 30 years out at your personal inflation rate.
Live Federal Reserve policy, inflation expectations, and global economic shifts.
Institutional hedging strategies to protect against purchasing power erosion.
Find stocks and assets beating your personal inflation rate.
Stress-test your portfolio against stagflation and hyperinflation scenarios.
The official Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a weighted average across a theoretical "average household" that may look nothing like yours. If you spend 40% of your income on rent but CPI only weights housing at 33%, your personal inflation is higher than reported. Similarly, if you drive frequently, eat out often, or have large healthcare expenses, your real inflation rate almost certainly exceeds the headline number.
You enter your approximate monthly spending across 8 categories: housing, food, transportation, healthcare, energy, education, entertainment, and other. The calculator weights each category's actual price increase (not CPI methodology) against your personal spending to compute your specific inflation rate — and then shows how many years it takes to halve your purchasing power at that rate.
Purchasing power erosion is the gradual loss of what your money can buy. At 3% annual inflation, your purchasing power halves in 24 years. At 7% — which is closer to what many households experienced in 2021–2023 — it halves in just 10 years. The calculator shows the Rule of 70 applied to your personal rate, plus which of your assets are keeping up with inflation and which aren't.
CPI uses methodological choices like hedonic adjustment (crediting "quality improvements" as price offsets), owner's equivalent rent (a survey-based proxy for housing costs), and geometric mean substitution (assuming consumers trade down as prices rise). These choices structurally reduce the reported CPI vs. what most people experience when they actually buy things.
No — the calculator focuses on measuring your personal inflation exposure. The Money GPS platform also includes a Macro Compass, AI Stock Analyst, and Portfolio Shield that cover inflation-hedge positioning. But the calculator itself is purely an educational measurement tool.