Inflation is the quietest tax there is. Enter an amount and a year, and see what it takes to match that buying power today, and how much value the dollar has silently lost. Built from official US consumer price data going back to 1913.
This calculator uses official US consumer price data back to 1913 to show what an amount from one year is worth in another. Enter an amount, pick a starting year and an ending year, and the result updates with the matching buying power.
Last updated
The same force erodes some currencies far faster than the dollar. Sovereo tracks where money holds its value and where it does not, every morning, free.
See how currencies compare → Get the free daily SITREPYou do not need any finance background. Here is the whole thing, simply.
It is the gradual rise in prices over time, which means each dollar buys a little less each year. A dollar is not destroyed; it just quietly shrinks in what it can purchase. Over decades that adds up enormously.
It tells you how many of today's dollars you would need to buy what your original amount bought back then. If $1,000 in 1980 needs several thousand dollars today, that gap is the buying power inflation removed.
Money left sitting in cash loses value every year to inflation, even though the number in the account does not change. This is why holding wealth, and where you hold it, matters, and why a currency that inflates quickly is so costly to the people who earn and save in it.
Where this comes from. Figures use the official US Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), annual averages, as published by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, covering 1913 to the present. The conversion is amount times the ratio of the two years' index values. The current year is a partial estimate based on the latest available data. CPI measures a national average basket; your own experience of inflation depends on what you actually buy. For general education, not financial advice.
The calculator uses the US Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), as annual averages. The data is published by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. It covers 1913 to the present.
The amount is multiplied by the ratio of the two years' index values. That gives the amount you would need in one year to match the buying power of the other.
No. The current year is a partial estimate based on the latest available data. It may change as new figures come out.
Not exactly. CPI measures a national average basket of goods and services. Your own inflation depends on what you actually buy.
By Todd Allyn, Founding Director, Sovereo Intelligence Research. Research standard.